Kids Room Color Wisdom: How Colors Affect Behavior

Colors have been known to be aesthetically pleasing due to their abilities to express emotion, symbolize specific things, or determine characteristics about an individual. It is commonly known to the general public that colors are gender specific; most girls prefer pink and purple, boys prefer blue and red, and a small population is attracted to neutral colors. This preference for certain colors has a heavy influence on the design and creation of play zones for children.
According to “Kids’ Room Color Wisdom: How Colors Affect Behavior”, colors have the potential to inspire, excite, soothe, heal, and even agitate human beings. The article breaks down how pink, purple, blue, red, and other colors have the potential to affect behavior. Pink has the possibility to calm down both sexes. However, most boys are not attracted to pink(Hammond 15). Purple symbolizes royalty, but it also symbolizes sensitivity, compassion, and inspiration in children. Blue, the dominant color for boys, decreases feelings of anxiety and aggression and also lowers blood pressure and heart rates(Hammond 3). Red has the ability to energize the body, excite the mind, and increase heart and breathing rates. Colors are important because they can sway thinking, change actions, and cause reactions.
The article, “4 Reasons Why Making STEM
Pink to Get Girls Interested is Absurd” explains how children believe colors and interests are directly associated with gender. The company LEGO because this company has not thought about or included girls in their work(Sinco 11). Before launching a new line, LEGO recreated classic building kits for girls with a splash of purple and sparkly themes. Consequently, the building kits did not sell. Instead, LEGO has come up with LEGO-FRIENDS just for girls, which is a toy line that uses the color pink to attract girls. The company believes that toys should be a certain color to attract and sell.
Disagreeing with the two articles stated above, “Building Kits Shatter the Princess Playthings Myth”, argues that toys should be gender-free. However, the article agrees with the articles mentioned above that children are not born loving either blue and trucks or pink and princesses, but instead society influences what pink and blue stands for(Valoy 38). The area of disagreement, however, is that this article believes that toys should not be attached to a particular gender. The color of the toys must be neutral so that it is not appealing to one gender over the other(Valoy 24,25). The article says that colors such as black, brown, gray, and white should appear on children’s toy sets. As a result, gender-free toys may break down a “stereotypical view of girlhood and boyhood”(Valoy 26).
In the first survey conducted, there were 10 questions that allowed the team to get a better understanding of what to put in the kid’s zone. The team focused on asking questions pertaining to the interests of the children. After analyzing each question and its answer, majority of the surveyees answered strongly agreed on questions like “I like learning new things, I love bright colors, and I love science, technology, engineering, and math”. Each question is associated with an activity that involves colors. The second survey conducted focused on the gender stereotypes of colors. The stereotypical view of colors for girls is pink and purple(Hammond 10). For boys, it is blue and green(Hammond 3). However, the survey was narrowed down to one color from each gender and three neutral colors. The neutral colors are there to see if the children are attracted to them. Pink was for girls, blue for the boys, and black, white, and brown as the neutral colors.
The surveys were distributed to children in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Elementary children from all over the region took the survey. After receiving the surveys back, all surveys were then analyzed and put into charts. The surveys proved the hypothesis to be incorrect. The data that was collected proved the hypothesis to be incorrect. The surveys were split into four groups. Those groups were younger females and males from kindergarten to second grade and older females and males from third to fifth. Figure 1 shows the four categories that make up the younger female surveys.
The yellow and orange were both 33.3% and red and green were 16.7%. In the next figure, Figure 2, shows how the younger males answered the survey.
Again, two colors(blue and yellow) were 33.3%. Green was 22.2% while brown was 11.1%. At this point, you can tell that the younger females and males graphs are similar. However, as the ages and grades increased, older females and males grades third through fifth, favored neutral colors, pink, and blue. They have the knowledge and ability to think for themselves instead of letting society do so. Therefore, the graphs will show a wide variety of opinions. Figure 3 shows the older females responses.
It is obvious that three fourths of the older females favored blue and pink and one fourth favored the same thing but with a neutral color. The last figure shows how the older males answered the survey questions.
The younger population likes colors that is associated with their gender. This makes

While researching how colors affect a child’s opinion, I came to the conclusion that a child’s eye tends to be more attracted to the colors socially associated with their gender. The colors children are attracted to is because of society. The views of society influences a child’s perspective and opinion. In fact, a child is given the color to associate with at birth(Hammond 8). The color of their room is associated with their gender. For example, boys’ rooms are usually blue and girls’ rooms are pink. I agree with the articles,“Kids’ Room Color Wisdom: How Colors Affect Behavior” and “4 Reasons Why Making STEM Pink to Get Girls Interested is Absurd”, because both articles explain how a child’s mind is tampered with when it comes to colors because of gender stereotypes. This point had already been argued(Valoy 21). In contrast, I disagree with the article “Building Kits Shatter the Princess Playthings Myth” due to the fact that the article believes colors do not have an affect on children. The color of the toy is one factor why that specific color sells. This article focuses on breaking gender stereotypes; however, children are excited by colors, so that can not be done.
Gender stereotypes of color are important because they put individuals in dangerous situations.
The gender stereotype limits a person’s full potential and well being. People do not acknowledge their personality and unique characteristics. Society influences a child’s opinion on color; therefore, they are not allowed to think for themselves. With the information that I have researched, I would like to slowly break down this specific gender stereotype by teaching elementary children to accept and love their unique characteristics. I would go to schools in my region to do this. Gender stereotypes of color must be broken down to allow children to think for
themselves.