Our sense of vision is an expert when it comes to recognizing the difference between familiar objects and imitations. This ability to tell the difference between real and fake relies on the fact that our sense of vision reads color reflections and uses them to recognize materials, objects, and meanings. This means that surface authenticity is more important for the way we respond to objects and spaces than the hue.

Objects in nature are easy for us to recognize. Our sense of vision developed to interpret the light reflections from nature’s surfaces correctly. Whether it’s a grain of sand or a massive chunk of granite, a cloud, or a lake, you don't have to look twice to recognize these objects. The only exception is the art of camouflage in the plant and animal kingdom.

Nesting eiderdown duck, so well camouflaged, that it is almost invisible.

Adapting surface appearance to the environment is a successful protection strategy for many creatures. Apart from this camouflage though, objects in nature are exactly as they appear.

Early cliff dwellers painted their walls using natural pigments and binders. The earliest manmade coatings were natural material used to decorate natural substrates, even the frescoes in ancient Pompeii. Recognizing the constructive nature of a building was easy.

The pigment Falun red was extracted from copper mining wastes in Sweden in the Middle Ages. It was a popular exterior paint from the 16th century onwards, as it gave Swedish wooden houses a color reminiscent of the brick housing preferred by wealthy Central Europeans. The red surface was supposed to simulate wealth. In any case, the paint color made with iron oxide and copper vitriol, rye starch and linseed oil allowed the wood or masonry construction to retain its visual integrity.

Karungi railway station, Sweden, photo by Teemu Vehkaoja, CC-BY-SA 2.5, 2006

This simplicity of formulations and the natural materials they contained changed with industrialization. Petroleum-based raw materials rapidly replaced them. Not only in the food industry have we become alienated from the natural ingredients that are best for our health! In the paint industry, new, highly processed, energy-intensive coating materials led us to colorful facades and plastic-coated interiors that reflect light in a completely different way than the beloved surfaces in nature.

Burano, photo Beat Hotz. Petrochemicals and individualization joined hands to create new urban landscapes

Today we must often deal with three separate narratives of the same reality: our sense of vision reacts to the surface materiality, which today is almost always artificial. We often do not know what’s behind the veneer. Our purchasing decisions are based on advertising and branding, which create stories that evoke emotions. Yet, once the sales pitch and the packaging are forgotten, it will be the architecture and the flow of light over its surfaces that we respond to. I suspect that the many contradictions between what we see and what we are told cause some of the uncertainty we are currently experiencing.

Awe-inspiring Nature. Photo under license from shutterstock.com

You will learn more about these principles of color design in my Masterclass. Stay tuned!

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