Biography
For many years, artists and interior designers have understood that certain colors can provoke specific emotional and sometimes physiological reactions. Within a certain culture, you can be fairly certain that most of the audience will react predictably to certain colors.
A motif is a recurring element within a work, so a color motif is obviously a recurring color within the work. The color may be associated with a character, place, feeling, timeframe, or even the work overall.
Red is a bright color and creates feelings of excitement and intensity. It is also used to warn of danger and can symbolize anger or passion (calling to mind the Flames of Love). In Indian culture (Bollywood) and many parts of Southeast Asia, red is the color of marriage. In East Asia, red is the color of luck (hence red envelopes on Chinese New Year). Oh, it's also the color of socialism and communism. Ironically, The United States's right-wing Republican Party is also associated with the color red: by the Turn of the Millennium, the standard color scheme in electoral maps on the news had coalesced as red for Republicans and blue for Democrats.
Blue is the most common favorite color and can create calmness, serenity, and heroism, although darker blues are associated with a feeling of melancholia. It is also symbolic of masculinity and, interestingly, also femininity, the latter due to the Virgin Mary often being depicted with blue robes. The association with calmness can also extend to intellect and through intellect to magic. Light blues are associated with freedom and hope, due to the colour of the sky. With blue pigments being rare in nature, it is associated with unattainable beauty and rarity, such as in the concept of the blue rose. Its association with cool-headed seriousness leads to it being used in politics to represent conservativism and authority, and is specifically the colour of sailors and police, but it can also represent laborers and the working class due to association with the traditional colour of denim workwear. In America, however, it's associated with the liberal-leaning Democratic party.
Green, in an odd duality, represents both the natural and the unnatural. It has the obvious association with nature, plant life, and environmentalism, but is also commonly the color of poison and radiation (especially when mixed with yellow), and is often the color of the Eldritch or the strange and alien. Similarly, it is associated with both health (the colour of hospitals, healing magic and healthy plants and foods) and sickness (the colour of puke, snot and nausea). Bright green can mean "good/correct/positive" (especially in opposition to bright red as bad/incorrect/negative), playing off the idea of it meaning safety. Green is the colour of the military, since camouflage is usually in shades of green. Green is also the colour of money in America, and (especially in Hip-Hop) marijuana. Green is heavily associated with the religion of Islam.
Yellow is cheery and warm. However, it can cause feelings of frustration and anger when it is the predominant color. It also has connections to fear and cowardice. In China, yellow is also seen as the color of royalty, mainly due to ancient China forbidding anyone but the emperor from wearing it. Soft, pale yellow is the colour of blond hair, an uncommon hair colour that mostly occurs naturally on children and baby birds, and therefore represents purity and cuteness. Yellow is associated with industrial work — in industrial settings, yellow is used to signal dangerous machinery or increase visibility of workers. Through this, it can also represent safety, through its use in safety equipment like hard hats and protective gloves. Yellow often forms the middle part of a spectrum between red and green, where red signals stop/bad/danger and green signals go/good/safe — yellow therefore signals ready/warning/caution. Yellow can also be added to the pink/blue spectrum to represent a gender somewhere between them, being used for babies whose sex isn't known, and is often the colour of tomboyish girls. It's also the dominant colour in the nonbinary and intersex Pride flags. Politically, yellow is generally associated with liberalism and right-libertarianism (though it's considered a monarchist color in East Asia).
Purple is the color of royalty and wealth, but also of wisdom. It is often associated with spirituality, power, exoticism, or poisonousness. In Japan, purple is one of two colors associated with death, the other being white. Due to being both a powerful masculine colour (the colour of kings) as well as regarded as a feminine colour (a more tomboyish alternative to pink) — and in fact, being a mix of red and blue — it has a connotation of flamboyance and gender ambiguity. In addition to this, it has an association with psychedelia, so purple is a popular colour with gender-bending and funky rock stars, from James Brown to Jimi Hendrix to Prince. Politically, purple represents monarchy, and (in a red/blue two-party system) 'third option' political tendencies.
Brown gives a feeling of strength and dependability. It makes us feel warmth, security, and comfort. Conversely, it is also the color of filthiness and decay. Brown is extremely common in nature, as the colour of the earth, tree trunks and dying/dead leaves, and a lot of animals (including humans) evolved hair, feathers and skin in brown pigments as camouflage and sun protection — natural products like wood, paper, fur and leather have to be processed with chemicals to make them into more appealing colours. Through this association, brown is the colour of roughness and naturalness, often used to market "eco-friendly" products. Paradoxically, it can be associated with old fashioned riches, as many luxury goods plundered during colonialism were brown (coffee, tea, exotic wood, spices) and were displayed prominently in rich European homes. Politically, brown represents far-right ideologies, especially fascism — in some European contexts, it's used as an opposite of green to refer to organisations and companies that are in favour of pollution.
Orange is, like yellow and red, an exciting color. It easily draws attention and conveys a feeling of warmth and enthusiasm. Politically, it's associated with Christian democracy; to a lesser extent, it's sometimes used to represent various forms of populism.
Pink is associated with romance, love, sex, and femininity—though this wasn't universal until the mid-to-late twentieth century, before which pink was sometimes seen as masculine due to red's association with blood. In Japanese media, pink can be associated with a Cherry Blossom Girl and by extension spring and rebirth. Pink also has a calming effect. Pink is frequently associated with LGBT people. Some moderate left groups (especially ones with social democratic leanings) have adopted pink.
Black is a color (or rather, not-color) of menace or evil. It can also be associated with death and, sometimes, rebirth. Due to it being what you see when your eyes are closed, it can also represent oblivion. Its association with sinister, understated strength, and a sense of it being a "rejection" of garish and distracting colours, gives it an association with stylish luxury and affluence, especially in fashion, furniture and packaging. In politics, it is the colour of anarchism and of militant, street-level movements, whether left (black bloc) or right (Blackshirts). It also represents black civil rights movements and cultural identity.
White symbolizes purity, innocence, and divinity. It can also make an area seem bland, sterile, or cold. In some Eastern cultures (such as Japan and China), white is a symbol of death. Taking its association with purity to a more sinister level, white can symbolise oblivion, emptiness and dissociation. It can also represent potential, being the colour of a blank page waiting to be filled. In terms of politics, white could either refer to pacifism (hence the white flag) or right-wing counter-revolution (hence the Russian White Army). Women are traditionally married in a white dress in many Western cultures.
Grey is used for mourning, humility and repentance. It can also represent depression, plainness, and lack of life or joy. Like brown, grey is common in nature, particularly rock and metal which gives it a similar connotation of strength. While usually a sombre colour that can represent seriousness and austerity, inclement weather often involves a grey sky, giving grey a connotation of rage and drama similar to storms and tornados. Independent politicians are often associated with the color.
Gold symbolizes wealth, justice, balance, and royalty. It also is associated with wisdom and heroism. The height of a civilization is called the golden age for this reason.
Silver symbolizes the moon and femininity. It is also often magical in nature. Additionally, tying into gold representing greatness, silver is sometimes used to represent second bananas or "Second Place", hence the use of the term "silver age" to refer to a golden age's successor, should it not be a dark age.
For the many specific ways colors are used as tropes, see Colour-Coded for Your Convenience and its subtropes.
See also Motif for other kinds of motifs found in Fiction. With how closely related the colors are to the elements, this has a lot of overlap with Elemental Motifs.
Please only include examples that do not belong on a more specific color trope.
