The most-loved colour in New Zealand? It’s blue. Approximately 35 percent of Kiwis pick it over other colours of the rainbow. That preference could actually be innate. Our ancestors were naturally drawn to blue for survival—it’s the colour of water.

Colour has a profound impact on how react to our environment. Part of it is due to our social, cultural, and personal relationships to colour. But a great deal of our response to colour is rooted in history and deep within our brains. Red, for example, has been proven to increase heart rates, a response connected to cavemen days of fire and alarm.

Yet scientists say there’s something even deeper happening when we respond emotionally to colour. The way our brains respond to light and the electromagnetic energy of colour can have a real physiological impact. That’s because light—or the colour spectrum—can affect the brain's neurotransmitters, chemicals that carry messages from our brains to our nerves to our muscles.