Abadee abadie

The color blue is one of the primary colors in the visible spectrum of light, characterized by its wavelength range of approximately 450 to 495 nanometers. It is often associated with the perception of calmness, stability, and tranquility.

In terms of physics, blue light is shorter in wavelength than red and green light, which contributes to its distinct appearance. It is commonly observed in nature, for example in the sky due to Rayleigh scattering, where shorter wavelengths of light are scattered in all directions by the gases and particles in the atmosphere, creating a blue hue.

In color theory, blue can be combined with other colors to produce a wide range of hues. When mixed with yellow, for instance, it produces green, while combining blue with red results in purple. In art and design, blue can evoke various emotions and reactions, influencing feelings of serenity or sadness depending on its shade—ranging from the soft tones of baby blue to the deep intensity of navy.

In addition to its visual properties, blue has diverse cultural associations, from representing trust and loyalty in branding to symbolizing melancholy in literature and music. Overall, blue is a complex color that plays a significant role in both the scientific study of light and human emotional expression.

[Totally not copied and pasted from AI]

Couple considerations...

Colours can be represented in code and/or numbers.
Hex for standard blue is #0000FF and RGB is 0,0,255. And from there it varies depending on how dark or light blue you want to go from the standard blue.

Source: https://www.figma.com/colors/blue/

Blue has significant implications in UI design (info taken from that Figma article):

* Stability, confidence, and professionalism: Blue is often associated with banks, corporations and firms that are aimed to be presented as reassuring and/or reliable.
* Sense of calm: Blue is a relaxing colour, both in nature and design. Skies and oceans are often associated with calmness.
* Visual hierarchy: Lighter blue to call for attention. Darker blue = more passive.

It's not possible to accurately describe anything about blue without first defining what blue even is.
A lot of people call cyan, blue, but this is pretty clearly incorrect since cyan has equal parts blue and green light in additive color, so it should just as well be considered green by some people yet it's not - except for by a few people who have blue green color-blindness, which suggests that humans have a color bias for the blue receptor cones in their eyes.

Anyways, as someone with a lot of visual art and color theory data in their data-sets, I find it important to point out that there are many shades of blue and while cyan is not technically blue, many people consider it to be blue.
A similar argument can be made about pale azure, which while technically on the blue part of the spectrum and consisting mostly of blue light in the RGB scale, is really closer to white than blue.

Blue is like a calmer purple or a more relaxed green and typically looks dark on its own.
I would pick 4 specific words denoting shades of blue for providing perspective on how blue can be used artistically and which shades would be preferable for which context:

• Cyan:While referred to as 'light blue' by some, from an art and science perspective, it's more like its own hue. Cyan "feels" wet and airy like an ocean or a sky.
  
  
• Ultramarine Blue:Close to true blue, without green or red light mixed into its hue, Ultramarine is an uncommon blue that "feels" artificial due to its scarcity in nature. It's sometimes associated with deep oceans the night sky and space but actual deep oceas and space tend to be darker.
  
  
• Baby Blue:Also referred to as light blue, this is the shade that more accurately amounts to "light blue" in art and science terms as its RGB values still primarily consist of blue. While sometimes associated with the sky, and usually better associated with the sky than cyan, it can lack the vibrance of a clear sky, making it "feel" more like a cloud on a sunny day or a cool spring breeze.
  
  
• Pale Azure:A blue so light that it's nearing white, it "feels" cold like ice and snowflakes.

Da ba Dee Daba Die

it's the colour of smurfs, sadness, and asphyxia.

Blue is the color of the sky on a clear day at noon

Originally posted by Eskimofo:

[...]
In color theory, blue can be combined with other colors to produce a wide range of hues. When mixed with yellow, for instance, it produces green, while combining blue with red results in purple. In art and design, blue can evoke various emotions and reactions, influencing feelings of serenity or sadness depending on its shade—ranging from the soft tones of baby blue to the deep intensity of navy.
[...]
[Totally not copied and pasted from AI]

Your "totally not AI" has a heavy bias for subtractive color in color theory,

While my response focuses more on additive color in color theory, primarily because color is caused by things other than just pigment. The blue of the sky does not come from a pigment, after-all.

I probably should have addressed subtractive color briefly in my response and the difference between subtractive and additive color. Just a brief sentence about how subtractive color comes from combining pigments, while additive color comes from combining wavelengths from the visible light spectrum.

Originally posted by Dom:

[...]
Source: https://www.figma.com/colors/blue/
[...] (info taken from that Figma article):
[...] Blue is often associated with banks, corporations and firms that are aimed to be presented as reassuring and/or reliable.
[...]

Oh my god! This description is making hate blue!

I do not find corporate firms and banks to be reassuring at all!

Originally posted by Ｋiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏:

Originally posted by Dom:

[...]
Source: https://www.figma.com/colors/blue/
[...] (info taken from that Figma article):
[...] Blue is often associated with banks, corporations and firms that are aimed to be presented as reassuring and/or reliable.
[...]

Oh my god! This description is making hate blue!

I do not find corporate firms and banks to be reassuring at all!

That doesn't mean they succeed but it's the goal.

VISA, PayPal, Chase, Barclays, Bank of America, American Express, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Walmart, Facebook, IBM, Intel, Ford, Samsung, Dell, LinkedIn, HP. Twitter before it became X... etc. etc.

Blue could be the most corporate colour out there. Certainly at the top.

There's this wavelength of light between 450 and 485 nm that we call blue. Many people consider red - light between 625-750 nm - to be it's opposite when the real "opposite" is orange - 590-625 nm

Things that are blue include: the sky, large bodies of water open to the sky, some types of flowers, etc. Orange is, funnily enough, found on oranges, which are a fruit. Which came first, the object or the adjective, I don't know


You can't really describe what it's like to experience light and color. Even describing physical sensation is hard

Originally posted by NW/RL:

... Orange is, funnily enough, found on oranges, which are a fruit. Which came first, the object or the adjective, I don't know ...

The fact that natural "red hair" and "red heads" denotes orange hair, suggests quite heavily that people didn't have a word to describe the color orange, until they started using the fruit's name to describe the color.

In many cultures, there is no word for "blue" and they just say that things are "sky colored" instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarine

Historically, blue pigment was the rarest and most expensive dye due to its scarcity in nature. There are no animals with blue fur or blue plants. In the vast majority of cases, the blue color we see - such as on butterfly wings and flower petals - is an optical illusion. That's why blue is the best color for representing something extraterrestrial, cosmic, divine, spiritual, or not of this world. It is also widely associated with calm, tranquility, and intellect.

https://youtu.be/l04dn8Msm-Y?si=j8020iT_x4eof-h6

Originally posted by Cinnamoon_dragon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarine

Historically, blue pigment was the rarest and most expensive dye due to its scarcity in nature. There are no animals with blue fur or blue plants. In the vast majority of cases, the blue color we see - such as on butterfly wings and flower petals - is an optical illusion. That's why blue is the best color for representing something extraterrestrial, cosmic, divine, spiritual, or not of this world. It is also widely associated with calm, tranquility, and intellect.

Geeze, those royals were really thinkin' about doing some butterfly genocide, weren't they?