When Did We Start to Fear Vibrant Colours?

When did everything start looking like a dentist’s waiting room?

If you can find a good deal, a used car is a better option than a new car. Mikbiz/Shutterstock

Once upon a louder, gaudier time, the world embraced colour like a toddler left alone with a marker set.

Cars weren’t just cars; they were peacocks on wheels, flaunting eye-searing oranges, unapologetic turquoises, and yellows so radioactive they could double as hazard signs.

Toaster ovens smirked from countertops in burnt orange and avocado green, gleefully clashing with wallpaper that looked like it had been on an acid trip. It was, in short, glorious chaos.

But now?

Now we’re all swimming in a soulless sea of greige, a colour so noncommittal it can’t decide if it’s beige trying to be grey or grey trying to be beige.

But Now? Now We Live in the Age of Greige

Walk into any car park today, and you’ll find yourself in a dystopian wasteland of monochrome mediocrity. White. Black. A few shades of grey.

Some daring daredevil might have sprung for silver, but that’s the full extent of the rebellion.

Remember when cars used to express a personality? A hot-pink roadster said, “Look at me, I’m going places!” A lime-green hatchback announced, “I care more about vibes than depreciation values!”

Today, every vehicle looks like it’s on its way to a very solemn, colour-coded funeral.

The grim reality is that people buy grey cars because they’re “safe.”

New Hyundai cars are displayed on the sales lot of a dealership in San Leandro, Calif., on May 30, 2023. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Not safe as in crash protection, though I’m sure they’re fine, but safe as in you won’t blush with shame when you try to resell them.

Heaven forbid you buy a jaunty red convertible and ruin some bean-counter’s depreciation spreadsheet. And so, we compromise.

By now, 80 percent of all new cars sold globally are in a greyscale colour, with white leading the pack at a staggering 25 percent, followed by grey at 21 percent, and black at 20 percent. This, by the way, is not a coincidence.

According to industry insiders, we pick these “safe” colours because they have better resale value.

Apparently, no one wants to be the sucker trying to sell a canary yellow hatchback to a market obsessed with “what goes with everything.”

Manufacturers are so attuned to this neurosis that they’ve given up on bold colours altogether unless you count orange, which limps in at 0.6 percent of cars, or purple, barely clinging to existence at 0.1 percent.

The ‘Beige-ification’ of Everything

It’s not just cars that have been drained of all personality. This plague of gloom extends to everything.

HBO, once a beacon in a cheery blue-and-white logo, has now gone monochrome. Its branding has undergone the corporate equivalent of getting a middle-aged buzz cut and claiming, “It’s for simplicity.”

Packaging, home interiors, wardrobes, everything is now a palette that any sane toddler with a box of crayons would throw out in disgust.

But this isn’t a modern phenomenon. The rot set in long before anyone had heard the term “open-plan neutrals.”

The UK’s Science Museum analysed 7,000 objects and concluded that society’s flirtation with colour started ghosting us as far back as the Industrial Revolution.

Before that, objects were lovingly crafted from vividly coloured woods or hand-painted with wild abandon.

Then factories got involved, and suddenly everything had to be uniform, efficient, and apparently devoid of anything remotely fun.

And yet, here’s the kicker, the really frustrating, gobsmacking truth.

This isn’t about aesthetics or sophistication. Oh no. This is about “fear.” That’s right. We’ve become scared of colour.

Commuters move through Gadigal Metro Station in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 19, 2024. Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Somewhere along the way, society collectively decided that hues brighter than “driftwood ash” were too dangerous to be trusted. Better to keep everything safe, bland, and unassuming.

It’s as though we’re terrified that a teal fridge or mustard-yellow scarf might trigger a full-scale societal collapse.

But There Is Hope (and It’s Painted in Pink and Purple Polkadots)

But not all hope is lost. Rebellion is brewing, and it is fabulous.

Apple (yes, the tech giant that once made white synonymous with smugness) reintroduced iMacs in actual colours.

Paint companies are reporting an uptick in customers demanding rich, unapologetic tones.

The hand-painted lanterns created by the community art organization "Tai O Fei Mao Li" are displayed in the Blue House in Wan Chai debuted this year. The lanterns were lighted up on Sep. 3 to add vivid colors to Stone Nullah Lane. T M Chan/The Epoch Times

Entire Instagram accounts are devoted to the subversive thrill of living room walls painted in jewel tones instead of the standard “vague oatmeal.”

Even red dining rooms are back, making meals feel like dramatic affairs worthy of Shakespearean soliloquies.

What Now?

Still, this is no guarantee that society’s palette will stay vibrant. The world will always yo-yo between exuberance and restraint. Today’s beige might become tomorrow’s psychedelic wallpaper revival. But what we shouldn’t do is let practicality dictate aesthetics.

Because a world without colour isn’t just boring, it’s unspeakably tragic.

It’s like baking a cake and deciding not to frost it because “simplicity” is in. Sure, the cake exists. But where’s the joy?

Where’s the giddy, unhinged delight of sprinkles? The unapologetic decadence of a thick layer of buttercream?

Life without colour, without a bit of glorious, unnecessary excess, is just a sad, dry sponge pretending to be enough. And honestly? I refuse to live like that.