Stitching memory with hues: How words edit the colors of our past

A company, albeit a useful one, announcing its chosen Colour of the Year has become an online event of sorts. Everyone rushes to their socials to dispense gyaan on how absurd (or fabulous) the choice is. No, there is no middle ground, sorry.

But that’s just the thing: we hear and smell a colour long before we see it. And the language we use to describe it, even to ourselves, quietly shapes our perception, not just of the colour itself but of everything we associate with it. Pantone’s Colour of the Year for 2026, Cloud Wonder, sounds less like a shade and more like something you might want to step into (or twitch your nose at, whatever your preference) rather than look at and mull about.

Seen in isolation, colour is more physics than poetry: wavelengths, cones and rods, neural processing. But colour, as we live it, is memory, culture, mind and heart. It’s the difference between saying “muted white” and “Cloud Wonder.” One feels flat, even boring; the other suggests something beyond — a pause, a softness, a suspended state of calm. The words we use frame the colour we see in our mind’s eye.

Before writing this article, I asked a few friends to describe their favourite colour to me. Their responses confirmed why colour naming has always mattered more than we admit. A colleague described mauve as “saffron in the sun.” A fellow journalist said his favourite shade of yellow reminded him of the feel of mid-morning winter sun on his skin. Staying with the theme, while one friend found blue to be like “oceanic whispers,” another described it as a “sky canvas, blank.” Words that sing of possibility — evoking anticipation, not emptiness but readiness; waiting to become.

This is why phrasing matters so deeply to marketers, designers and artists. When a beige wall paint is described as “oat milk,” or a lipstick shade as “blushing twilight,” do not dismiss it as whimsical. This is a clever tapping into associative memory — language cues sensation. A colour called “hospital green” will never feel the same as “mystic wonder,” as a Bengaluru-based writer describes the very same shade of forest green. The mind fills in the gaps, borrowing from experience, emotion and imagination.

Psychologically, this is crucial because our brains are prediction machines. We constantly anticipate how something will make us feel before we fully experience it. This is why a photographer friend thinks green is “mossy moon,” while the same colour becomes “earth’s vibe” for a nature-loving colleague.

Studies in cognitive psychology suggest that labels influence perception by activating emotional and sensory networks in the brain. When a colour is described as “warm,” “calming,” or “electric,” we are more likely to feel warmth, calm or stimulation upon encountering it. The word does not follow the feeling; it often leads it.

This effect extends beyond objects into how we perceive people and situations. Think of how quickly colour-coded language seeps into personality and morality: someone can be “grey,” “dark,” “golden,” or “blue.” We speak of “red flags” and “green lights,” of “black moods” and “rose-tinted” views. These are not neutral metaphors. They shape judgment. A “grey area” feels uncertain and morally ambiguous, while a “white lie” is almost cleansed by its colour.

Memory, too, is filtered through this lens. Childhood summers are rarely recalled as merely yellow; they are “sun-drenched,” “honeyed,” “golden.” Trauma is often rendered in darker hues. Over time, language edits memory, tinting it, intensifying certain emotional frequencies while muting others. What makes this especially powerful today is the saturation of visual culture. We scroll through thousands of images daily, but it is the captions, names and descriptors that anchor meaning. A colour without a name passes quickly. A colour with a story lingers. Cloud Wonder does not just suggest a shade; it promises respite. In an anxious, overstimulated moment, that promise is potent.

There is, however, a quiet responsibility embedded in this. If words can soften perception, they can also harden it. Colour language can stereotype, exoticise or sanitise. Think of how skin tones are described; how some hues are deemed “neutral” while others are marked as “bold” or “ethnic.” These linguistic choices reveal hierarchies we have absorbed without question. This is also why many protested the choice of white — with all its loaded connotations — as the colour of the year in an era of deep polarisation and resurgent racism.

To pay attention to how we name colour, then, is to pay attention to how we frame reality. Words do not merely describe what we see; they train us in how to see.