Blue

Be it celestial or oceanic, blue evokes wide open spaces, calm and serenity. It symbolizes peace, escape and dream.

For sometime, blue has been the favorite color in most western cultures. Over time, blue as taken on a multitude of symbolic connotations which have been modified or crystalized in our thought processes.

During the Middle Ages, lapis-lazuli, the blue pigment of choice, was so precious that it cost as much if not more than gold. That is the reason blue was used to depict the Virgin's mantle.

In antique Greece and Rome, sky blue was also the color of Zeus and Jupiter.

Among blue's attributes: calm, peaceful, pacific. A room painted in dark blue can even have a sedative effect. Blue also displays a more dynamic side, one that promotes creativity and inspiration.

Hygiene, freshness and cleanliness are difficult to dissociate from blue. Advertisers continually use it to demonstrate those qualities in numerous products which they either color in blue or package in blue: windshield washer fluid, powdered detergent and its blue particles and mint candies are but a few examples.

Blue stands for peace as the United Nations' flag and the blue helmets of its peacekeepers remind us.

A number of modern expressions, based on the word blue, carry a variety of connotations. Among them: "to be blue with cold" (freezing), "once in a blue moon" (very rarely), "to be in a blue funk" (petrified), "the blue" (sea) and "blue-blooded" (of noble blood).

La Couleur Nature, histoire et décoration; Paris, Le Temps Apprivoisé; 1993; 256 pages.
Pastoureau, Michel; Dictionnaire des couleurs de notre temps; Paris, Christine Bonneton, 1999; 255 pages; Collection Symbolique et société.