ABOUT COLOUR: ORANGE

About Orange

The colour orange radiates warmth and happiness. In the world around us it’s the colour of vivid sunsets, fire, flowers, vegetables and many fruits. It’s the colour of Halloween, pumpkins, and marmalade, it is also the colour of festivity and amusement.

Orange means energy, vitality, excitement, activity, adventure, and risk.

Orange is associated with vitamin C and good health. Orange is symbolic of the Fall season. The colour Orange is associated with Protestantism.

Orange as a flourescent colour is used for high visibility. It is worn as vests for construction workers, cyclists, city traffic site workers and police officers. Orange cones are used as construction zone marking and safety equipment. Orange is the colour of school buses.

It is a popular colour for sports teams because of its high visibility and association with activity.

There are a broad spectrum of orange tints and shades like terracotta, cinnamon, melon, peach, salmon, and burnt sienna.

Orange in Different Cultures

Because of its symbolic meaning as the colour of activity, orange is often used as the colour of political and social movement. Orange is the party colour for too many countries to mention.
This colour as mentioned above is a popular colour for sports teams.
Western Culture: Orange is a theme color for Halloween, halloween jack-o-lanterns, halloween decorations, and pumpkins. This makes sense because it is the color associated with autumn and harvest.
The Dutch national sports teams, Australian Football League, Indian Premier League, Ukrainian Premier League, Bulgarian A Professional Football Group, Gaelic Athletic Association, United Football League, Philippine Basketball Association, Scottish Premier League, Norwegian Premier League and the Canadian Football League. [information from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(colour)]
India: Orange is incorporated in the flag of India
Niger: Orange is on the Flag of Niger representing the Sahara desert and the orange disk symbolizes either the sun or independence.
United Kingdom: orange stands for the Northern Irish Protestants. Orange is on the flag of Ireland.
Netherlands: The Royal family of the Netherlands belongs to the House of orange. It is the national colour of the Netherlands.
In Asia: it is the symbolic and sacred colour of Buddhism – illumination, the highest state of perfection. The saffron colours of robes to be worn by monks. This colour is also symbolic and a sacred colour of Hinduism.
China: In ancient China, orange represented transformation.

Theory of Orange

Orange is a secondary colour located midway between the primaries yellow and Red on the colour wheel. It’s character of expression changes depending on the ratio of these primaries in the mixture. This ratio will reflect its colour temperature. More yellow makes the orange lighter and more red makes orange darker.
Orange became a important colour for all the impressionist painters. They understood colour theory, and they knew that orange placed next to it’s complement blue made both colours brighter as seen in the painting Sunrise by Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting Oarsmen at Chatou.
Paul Gauguin used orange paint as backgrounds, for clothing and skin colour, to fill his paintings with light and exoticism.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was very fond of orange, the colour of amusement.
Claude Monet painted a series of haystacks with the colour orange.

Things Orange

Fruit: Apricots, Butternut squash, Cantaloupe, Cape Gooseberries, Carrots, Golden kiwifruit, Grapefruit, Mangoes, Nectarines, Oranges, Papayas, Peaches, Persimmons, Pineapples, Pumpkins, Rutabagas, Sweet corn, Tangerines.
Vegetables: Orange bell pepper, butternut squash, yams, carrots.
Flowers: California poppy, flowering maple, pot marigold, Asiatic lily, butterfly wee, Asiatic lily, ‘Klondike’ cosmos, Iceland poppy, helenium, lantana, fritillaria.
Gemstones: Garnet, Mexican fire opal, orange beryl, orange tourmaline, Malaya garnet, Orange sapphire, poppy topaz, mandarin garnet, Mexican jelly opal, orange diamond, orange sunstone, orange zircon, citrine, orange amber, peach moonstone, sardonyx, orange agate, Picasso marble, peach aventurine, palm wood, orange fluorite, orange beryl.
Animals: Lions, tigers, orangutans, red river hogs, fire fox, gila monster, dart frog, orange Julius butterflies, monarch butterflies, goldfish, Irish setter.
Other: Garfield comic strips, cheese, a lion’s blaze, Cheetos, Doritos, traffic cones, orange soda, pennies, loonies, Vitamin C, life vests, the gates at Central Park, Ernie from The Muppets, Home Depot Logo, Kraft macaroni & cheese, The Golden Gate Bridge, Beeker the Muppet, nail polish, lipstick, basketballs, campfires and sunsets.

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