Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

bethmathews.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 218 posts

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#31

Post by bobomonkey »

mikepurvis wrote: post #21
ryandrake wrote: post #13

It's so nice to see colors in any kind of government, industrial, or commercial building. The "everything must be gray/beige" fad has dominated institutional interior design for at least 30 years. Maybe it's just nostalgia, I remember the wall colors in banks, schools, doctor's offices, mcdonalds, and so on in the 1970s and they seemed so wonderful. All these things got a coat of white paint sometime in the 2000s and…

I feel that too. My house had significant chunks painted a vivid aquamarine when I moved in 2018, and my now-ex insisted that we paint over it all in grey. After she moved out, I put up greens, yellows, brown, and blue all over the house. It's not quite as "public pool" feeling as that original aquamarine, but it's certainly more lively than grey/white. Funny enough though, when I had a designer come in to take measu…

Install the boring shit and use colored vinal wrap for fun. Good resale value and you can enjoy life.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#32

Post by karlgkk »

> We once went on a tour to spot bald eagles in West Tennessee, and upon arrival, a woman with fluffy hair in the state park bathroom told us she had seen 113 bald eagles the day before. We ended up seeing (counts on one hand)…2.

As a semi professional eagle enjoyer, if the day before was trash day, then she might have been telling the truth. I’m not joking, they have bald eagle proofed dumpsters in Alaska.

They’re basically smart seagulls with talons.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#33

Post by SoftTalker »

mikepurvis wrote: post #21
ryandrake wrote: post #13

It's so nice to see colors in any kind of government, industrial, or commercial building. The "everything must be gray/beige" fad has dominated institutional interior design for at least 30 years. Maybe it's just nostalgia, I remember the wall colors in banks, schools, doctor's offices, mcdonalds, and so on in the 1970s and they seemed so wonderful. All these things got a coat of white paint sometime in the 2000s and…

I feel that too. My house had significant chunks painted a vivid aquamarine when I moved in 2018, and my now-ex insisted that we paint over it all in grey. After she moved out, I put up greens, yellows, brown, and blue all over the house. It's not quite as "public pool" feeling as that original aquamarine, but it's certainly more lively than grey/white. Funny enough though, when I had a designer come in to take measu…

It's common for homes especially when prepped for sale because neutral colors won't clash with whatever the potential buyer might want to bring in e.g. furniture, artwork, or other decor.

Most of the rooms in my house are painted in colors and I mostly like it but it can sometimeds feel fatiguing. I've thought about repainting in a neutral gray or green.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#34

Post by cynicalsecurity »

TL;DR: because mid-20th-century designers believed soft green reduced eye strain and improved focus.

Basically the same nonsensical belief as in regard the dark mode nowadays.

I don't even believe it's true. Green is just an army colour, that's pretty much it. Army uses army colours. Mystery solved.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#35

Post by SoftTalker »

Loughla wrote: post #11
somat wrote: post #7

I wonder if the designers of cold war soviet planes read the same color theory because their cockpits are always a very particular indescribable shade of green. There were also very specific colors for subsystems, yellow for fuel, purple for hydraulics etc. Much more than the contemporary US designs.

My father was a mechanic and crew chief working on F-14's during his time in the air force. His two takeaways from his service were: 1. No one should ever join the military for any reason ever forever, and 2. Somebody needs to color code literally anything. He talked about how the wiring schematics were a maze, made worse by using only non-labeled gray and black wires with connections and mounts that were the same co…

Cheaper to buy huge spools of gray clad wiring than a lot of different color coded wires? Also you don't have to stock a lot of different colors for repairs.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#36

Post by jaggederest »

karlgkk wrote: post #32

> We once went on a tour to spot bald eagles in West Tennessee, and upon arrival, a woman with fluffy hair in the state park bathroom told us she had seen 113 bald eagles the day before. We ended up seeing (counts on one hand)…2. As a semi professional eagle enjoyer, if the day before was trash day, then she might have been telling the truth. I’m not joking, they have bald eagle proofed dumpsters in Alaska. They’re b…

We took a trip to Alaska via RV, and were parked at a roadside. I got up at 11:30pm at "night" (broad daylight) to use the restroom and was so annoyed by the seagulls I went outside to yell at them.

It was eagles fighting over a salmon. They genuinely do sound and act exactly like seagulls.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#37

Post by torginus »

somat wrote: post #7

I wonder if the designers of cold war soviet planes read the same color theory because their cockpits are always a very particular indescribable shade of green. There were also very specific colors for subsystems, yellow for fuel, purple for hydraulics etc. Much more than the contemporary US designs.

That color shows up a lot in stairways apartment blocks and school corridors and bathrooms in ex-Soviet bloc countries.

My two guesses are that it was colored like that get the pilots feel like they were in a particular environment - a familar but not exactly private or comfortable one. It's a cultural thing like if you paint a bus yellow, Americans will think of a school bus, but most other people won't.

My other guess is that they only made certain kinds of dye, and its very well possible the same factory made it that made it for bathroom tiles. In capitalism, if you don't have orange paint, for example, some company will just start making it if there's a demand.

In communism, if nobody makes it, then it's not available, until and if some comittee decides that it should be made.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#38

Post by Terr_ »

Seeing all those two-tone walls with green blow and cream above, I bet it isn't coincidental that those tones resemble plants under an overcast outdoor sky.

Either because of unconscious choice, or because some designer theorized that people would be biologically primed to prefer it.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#39

Post by Rantenki »

While I am sure there are stylistic reasons for using that color, there is another common reason why you see blue-green colors in paint, especially in older industrial environments: zinc chromate/phosphate corrosion protective coatings. Zinc chromate primer is the color you see on the interior surfaces of some aircraft, to inhibit corrosion. Zinc phosphate is more of a gray in most cases, although varying paint chemistries result in a spectrum between those two, with seafoam nearly smack in the middle.

These are still available today, although the chromate version seems less popular for general use due to toxicity, especially (I assume) in the case of a fire.

I have painted quite a few bits of sheet metal with a sea-foam-ish blue-green/gray paint back in the day (30 years or so ago). I don't recall the manufacturer, but it was a zinc conversion coating in nearly exactly that seafoam color, which has probably stolen at least a few years of my life expectancy. The same company sold other paints in a sickly mustard yellow, and close to fire-engine red, all with slightly different chemistries, I assume for different base metals.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#40

Post by gukov »

torginus wrote: post #37
somat wrote: post #7

I wonder if the designers of cold war soviet planes read the same color theory because their cockpits are always a very particular indescribable shade of green. There were also very specific colors for subsystems, yellow for fuel, purple for hydraulics etc. Much more than the contemporary US designs.

That color shows up a lot in stairways apartment blocks and school corridors and bathrooms in ex-Soviet bloc countries. My two guesses are that it was colored like that get the pilots feel like they were in a particular environment - a familar but not exactly private or comfortable one. It's a cultural thing like if you paint a bus yellow, Americans will think of a school bus, but most other people won't. My other gu…

The reason for the green stairways was the vast surplus of the green paint (used for military equipment) post-WW2.
Post reply on HN