Why Yellow for Yoga?

Our guest post today is by Jessica L. Gordon, a fellow color consultant whom I recently had the pleasure of having lunch with. Jessica has been a professional artist and color consultant for 10 years. Her obsession with color began in a figure painting class with Alan Loehle. Each color had to be mixed on the pallet, scooped up with a pallet knife, and compared against a model to match his or her particular skin tone before the paint was allowed to touch the brush or the canvas. It was then that Jessica was sucked into the world of paint colors. She provides color design services to homes and businesses in the Annapolis, MD area.

Why yellow for yoga?

I’ve been searching around on the internet trying to find some rhyme or reason to all the yellow walled yoga studios I’ve read about or seen lately. I looked at as many pictures I could find in a half hour period of time.
image source
Ouch! I think my heart would be racing in here!

I surprised myself with my findings…
image source
Not bad…

I have to say that I cannot live in yellow. Not that I’ve ever tried, but I have an aversion to yellow on MY walls. Not to say that for my clients I can’t pick out the absolute perfect yellow to harmonize with the household, because I definitely CAN and DO. But the thought of doing yoga regularly in a yellow walled yoga studio gave me anxiety to imagine.
image source
I’ve always pictured yoga as something that you do with your body. You don’t NEED special equipment in order to start a practice. All you need is you. It’s always felt natural and earthy to me. My father practiced yoga pretty much daily my whole life, and he never even acquired so much as a yoga matte. So naturally the perfect environment to me seems to be the natural world. Actually in nature is still my favorite place to practice. However I couldn’t seem to find a picture of a studio that mimicked the colors of the earth that I liked in its expression inside.
image source
That’s not me!

I think the perfect situation would have to actually be wooden floors, stained dark enough to feel like the earth. Floors that are too light can cause balancing issues. The walls would absolutely need to be either glazed to look like, or actually be clay; a product of the earth. Clay on the walls actually some how translates to life and energy in the interior of a space. The great thing about it as well is that it will help to maintain a steady temperature, staying cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
image source
It’s hard to see in this picture, but this olive would be perfect.

image source
This might be too cool, but wow!

But the color, I think it needs to be a mixture, not too cool and not too warm. A very muted gold could be energizing, but a yellow/brown/green might be the optimum way to go. Colors that mimic our surroundings and have life seemed to be most harmonious to this natural way of maintaining one’s health. What are your thoughts?