Green Ties and Blue Accent Colors

[PikaBlue]

Ted Lieu's comment about Tim Walz and the green tie reminded me about the color perception of many men. This post is not to in any way denigrate men. Years ago my husband and I were redecorating our family room. I was undecided on an accent color and asked my husband for his input. He said, "I would really like blue." I replied, "What color of blue?" He looked quite confused and stated with just the barest hint of frustration in his voice, "You know, BLUE." Hoping to help him out, I questioned, "Baby blue, robin egg blue, royal blue, teal blue, corn flower blue, azure blue, sapphire blue, aqua blue, turquoise blue, slate blue, powder blue, electric blue, peacock blue . . .?" He chose black. So, it's just fine that Tim Walz complimented Ted's "green" tie.

[MLAA]

1. Blue!

I was having the bedroom painted and husband asked for blue. I’d chosen the rest of the home decor including all the other walls painted a subtle neutral. I was bad. I was very bad. I did not select a soft blue. I had it painted the strongest blue I could find. When he returned from work travel he saw the masterpiece. A couple days later he asked ‘do you think it might be a little too blue? Maybe we should just paint it the same color as the rest of the house. The handyman had no issue getting paid again a few days after having just finished the blue masterpiece. Everyone was happy in the end 😂

[PikaBlue]

4. Your husband was very diplomatic.

I think a lot of men are color challenged because they have, traditionally, had so few color choices with respect to their wardrobe and decorating options. My husband once pondered why I had so many different shades of red nail polish. A legitimate, if somewhat naive, question. It's like asking why drill bits come in so many different diameters.

[Zoomie1986]

20. Same here, but with all colors, LOL

The husband doesn't get my nail polish collection, but he doesn't argue with it. He knows it wouldn't make sense to him to hear the answer: Well, there's bright red, dark red, brick red, cherry red, neon red, reds with shimmer, reds with sparkles, creme reds, jelly reds, crelly reds, holo reds--

[LiberalFighter]

28. If people, probably mostly men were to observe the differences different shades there for lipstick and nail polish

They might understand.

But what I see as a male vs what a woman sees is likely not the same. And I guess depends on what the rest of their apparel consists of too. But some women aren't very good with colors either. Like the loudmouth girlfriend of Don Jr.

[pwb]

2. Cavalry Blue

my car color.

[PikaBlue]

3. Which blue?

Is that a light blue with just a touch of silver or a medium blue saturated with a gray hue?

[pwb]

19. It is similar to the blue D U uses up top.

In different light it is a different Blue.

[PikaBlue]

23. That's gorgeous!

[LostOne4Ever]

5. This post reminds me of a huge debate I had with my mother

She had a shirt and she said it was Lavender.

I claimed the shirt was pink and that lavender is a light shade of purple.

So we looked it up and the name of Lavender comes from a light purple flower but the color of lavender can describe multiple shades of both light purple and pink.

Lots of the more precise color variations can have multiple colors associated with them of varying hue, value, and saturation.

We both claimed victory and left it at that.

The shirt was pink…

[PikaBlue]

6. Color Names

While completing his degree in architecture back in the 1940s, my father worked part-time for a nationally known paint company. His job was to design/create the colors. There was an entire group whose function was to create the names by which the paint colors were to be sold. It is somewhat arbitrary. Just to note that, traditionally, lavender is a combination of blue and red, offset by gray, brown, and black. Lavender runs to a greater proportion of blue with a touch of gray. Lavender is my favorite color and my father always custom created the lavender paint for my bedroom. I had a cow when he squirted a dab of brown pigment into the can. Lilac tends to have a greater saturation of pink. Violet has a lot of red. Mauve is mostly pink with a touch of taupe.

[Retrograde]

9. Color, dyes, and pigments are a complex

and fascinating subject. The chemistry of paints and dyes is affected by a lot of things - the composition of the color itself, what it's used on (I've gotten different colors from the same dye bath on cottons than on silks), exposure to light, surrounding colors, etc. And that's not even considering how eyes work, and how culture influences our experiences of color.

For fun, get a stack of reproductions of the same painting from different art books: you'll find there can be a wide range of what the reproductions look like, including variations in color from the photography or printing process.

Fun chemistry fact: mauve is the first artificial color, extracted from coal tar in 1854 and known as Perkin's Purple. This is often considered the birth of organic chemistry. To me, mauve is a light greyish purple

[PikaBlue]

11. Historical Colors

I have always been fascinated by the colors used in many Colonial American homes. Some are so vibrant (we might say, "loud" today). Do you know whether this was due to the availability of pigments or to something as simple as they lived with natural lighting during the day an candlelight by night and, therefore, preferred stronger colors? Thomas Jefferson certainly preferred bright yellow and Washington's green (even without radium) is quite vibrant. I recently read an article on mauve and it was all the rage at one time.

[Retrograde]

12. Could have been a status thing

Dark,vibrant colors are more expensive to produce since they require specialized knowledge and expensive materials. Natural dyes on wool and linen give muted colors unless you take extra steps. From my experiments, madder produces soft corals and pinks, but I've read that if you use a more complex process you can get Turkey Red, which is a vivid red. It's a multi-step process that included rotted sheep manure and rancid oil IIRC, and was produced far from population centers. A lot of bright colors required toxic metals or other chemicals, such as Prussian Blue, or the arsenic salts used for some greens. The colors would last (provided they weren't exposed to too much light or harsh treatment (such as washing with lye soaps) but they cost more.

I think that people then and now just like strong colors. A few years ago I saw a museum show that tried to recreate the "real" look of ancient Greek statues, based on what remained of the pigment on the statues and contemporary descriptions. Garish barely starts to describe the results! So it may also be the fashion of the times - I remember the mid-60s when it became more acceptable for men to wear something other than black, gray, brown, and navy, and psychedelic clothing was everywhere! There's a certain shade, Nile Green, that screams 1930s - it was widely used for a decade or so, then vanished for a few decades.

An out-of-print book I recommend is Barbara Brachman's "Clues in the Calicos", which talks about colors in US cotton textiles in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[PikaBlue]

16. Thank you

Thank you for making the time to share your knowledge. The vibrant green paint of the 1929s and 1930s came from the addition of radium. If you haven't read about the Radium girls it's a story worth Googling!

[bif]

17. The movie was excellent as well.

[PikaBlue]

25. Status

I think you have the best explanation. At that time, the British put a tax on paint; therefore only the rich could afford the more lustrous pigments.

[JustAnotherGen]

27. I have Martha Washington Rose

In my dining room. Petit Trianon blue/aqua in the living room.
Historic Tudor revival - so I went light and bright on the inside.

Exception - bedroom - Terracotta. Nod to my husband's homeland.

[PikaBlue]

29. Williamsburg here

Take out the lamps and the modern kitchen and my home could move to Williamsburg. Most of my fabrics, china, etc. were purchased from their website. Furniture is all Queen Anne and Chippendale. Habitat for Humanity will have a great haul when I am gone. My daughter gets the house but has her own furnishings and wants to turn one floor of the house into a cat rescue domicile. She has been rescuing cats since 1999 but efforts have been limited as she lives in an apartment. My vet's wife has enjoyed numerous jealousy-provoking vacations on my dimes. It has been worth it.

[JustAnotherGen]

30. Our HPC is completely flexible

On interior. It's the exterior which must be maintained.

Our windows are all the originals - leaded and gorgeous. We have painstakenly restored each casing and were able to restore the very neglected front double doors. It's getting back to the glory of the Lindbergh trial - when reporters took pictures of it!

[PikaBlue]

31. It must be so gratifying to lovingly restore such an historical home.

The architectural detail and craftsmanship are, undoubtedly, amazing!

[bif]

13. I'm reading a great book on the very subject

called "color by Victoria Finlay.

[PikaBlue]

15. Thank you!

[MLAA]

18. I've come to believe we can look at the very sample piece of cloth and yet actually see the color differently.

[Ilsa]

21. There is an online "color intelligence" test where you have to

line up colors in three or four strips from one shade to another. It shows how accurate your color vision is and which colors, hues, etc you see the best and which ones you have trouble remembering. My worst are greenish khakis and golden brown khakis.

[MLAA]

26. Cool, I will look for it.

[Sparkly]

32. Orchid.

I suspect it was orchid.

[senseandsensibility]

7. Yes, both my brother and my hubby are color blind to a certain extent

My hubby apparently sees all shades of red (everything from rusty orange to pink to burgundy to fire engine red as "red". I used to tease him a little, but since home decor and clothing choices are not important to him, it rarely comes up anymore. I just make all those kinds of decisions.

[PikaBlue]

8. The Crayola box of eight

I think that's the color reference for many men and that's why I have absolutely no problem with Walz's perception of the green tie. A green tie by any other name is still a green tie.

[Retrograde]

10. Green's sort of like blue

The color spectrum is a continuum - there's no hard and fast way to say where one color ends and another begins aside from culture and available names. Green runs into blue but English doesn't have agreed-on words for "that color that's halfway to Y but isn't X"- IIRC, Japanese often lumps green and blue together with one word, and Russian distinguishes "blue" from "dark blue"

[Wounded Bear]

14. I remember 20-30 years ago reading about a man that got in hot water with his HOA...

for painting his fence or something the wrong shade of white.

Seems there are over 100 different shades of "white" paint. Who knew?

[Ilsa]

22. It's possible Walz has mild colorblindness.

I think seeing blues and greens as very similar happens, but isn't the most common (red vs green is). Maybe he has Tritanomaly: a reduced sensitivity to blue light, and very rare. This makes it difficult to tell the difference between blue and yellow, violet and red, and blue and green.

[PikaBlue]

24. Thats quite common.

On the other hand, the the word "chartreuse" may not have been on the tip of his tongue. Men tend to perceive the world in "team" colors. I got in trouble for describing a Florida team's colors as medium turquoise and dark peach. Not my fault that I couldn't afford HDTV at that time.
😊

[Bucky]

33. Baby blue, robin egg blue, royal blue, teal blue, corn flower blue, azure blue, sapphire blue, aqua blue, turquoise blue

... slate blue, powder blue, electric blue, peacock blue

Admit it, at least three of those you just made up. Sheesh. Just get a blue!

[PikaBlue]

34. All in the eye of the beholder? 😸

If you are tired of arguing over politics at the family Thanksgiving feast, just bring an array of paint strips from Home Depot and watch the the turkey feathers fly as everyone opines on which color rectangle is truly Nile green. It's boring conversationally; however, such debates rarely lead disinheritance or bloodshed.

[Bucky]

35. Ha!

Sounds like a perfect plan😆🩵🤎💜🧡🤍🩷💛🖤