Colour and Place

Why places are the colours they are: the stone, clay and earth pigments under a region, the light and climate it sits in, the building traditions that followed, and the heritage rules that now keep those colours in place.

A place's colours are stated only with provenance, and each is marked as measured, documented or editorially derived. No palette is taken from photographs, and a material that dominates one district is not presented as the colour of a whole city or country.

10 topics · 54 evidence-labelled claims · 62 sources

Ground and materials

Building stone, brick clay, earth pigments and limewash.

Why are some towns built almost entirely in one colour of stone?Because stone is heavy, and until canals and railways a town was built from whatever could be quarried within carting distance, s…Why is brick yellow in London, red across most of Britain and cream in Milwaukee?Brick is the colour its clay fires to, and clays differ by region.Where do ochre, sienna, umber and Falu red come from, and are they really the colours of those places?They are iron-bearing earths, and their colour comes from two minerals: yellow-brown goethite and red haematite, darkened by mang…Why are so many traditional settlements whitewashed?Because lime was a protective coat before it was a colour.How do the building colours of different regions compare?Compare them by what causes the colour, not by country.

Light and climate

Latitude, atmosphere and weather, and what they do to a surface.

Does the same building colour look different at different latitudes?It is lit differently, and that much can be calculated: at midwinter noon the sun stands about 6° above the horizon at Falun and…Why does a town's stone or brick change colour after it is built?Because the surface is not the material.

Tradition and regulation

Vernacular practice, civic colour and heritage controls.

Why are the houses of Jaipur pink, Jodhpur blue and Chefchaouen blue — and how good is the evidence?Mostly it is not good.Who decides what colour buildings can be in a historic town, and how?Usually a planning authority, and less often with a colour chart than people assume.How should a colour palette for a place be built, and what counts as evidence for it?From sources that say what was observed, where and how — kept in three separate grades: measured, documented and editorially deri…