12. The Meanings of Colors Vary by Culture

Colors have associations and meanings, for example, red means “in the red” or financial trouble, or it could mean danger or stop. Green means money or “go.” Pick colors carefully since they have these meanings. And different colors might mean different things to subgroups. A few colors have similar meanings everywhere (gold, for example, stands for success and high quality in most cultures), but most colors have different meanings in different cultures.    

For example, in the U.S. white signifies purity and is used at weddings, but in other cultures, white is the color used for death and funerals. Happiness is associated with white, green, yellow, or red, depending on the part of the world you are in. David McCandless of InformationIsBeautiful.net has a color wheel that shows how different colors are viewed by different cultures: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours-in-cultures/