LOL I just bought a can of Dulux Sea Foam and one of Dulux Sea Foam Quarter yesterday
Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
61–70 of 218 posts
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#62TL;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.
Why do doctors wear green?
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#63"Make a color theme for my terminal based on the Birren and DuPont master color safety code for the industrial plant industry."
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#64the Burt Reynolds poster
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns, driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes. There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the research back in the day to figure out what color…
I'm sure tons of people along the way "noticed" but if you're selling LEDs or you're paid by the LED people to create marketing to convince people that LEDs are gonna save the planet, you're not gonna bring that up.
IDK if you've noticed but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did. I like the color spectrum of a real lightbulb better, too, but not enough to pay 10x in power. I make up for it by using all kinds of random bulbs all over the place so that the aggregate light in the room fills more of the spectrum than if I coordinated them all to be the same.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#66I 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.
I've noticed that both American and Soviet planes used greenish colors, but the American ones are a yellowish green, while the Soviet ones are a bluish green. I've always wondered if the American yellowish green was chosen because it's similar to the color of the zinc chromate primer used on those aircraft, so the transparency of the paint wouldn't be an issue.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#67TL;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.
Why do doctors wear green?
Green is the opposite color of red (blood) on the color wheel and it was supposed to reduce visual fatigue. I think green scrubs have fallen out of favor in many places, but that was one of the prevailing reasons.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns, driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes. There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the research back in the day to figure out what color…
> that's why they were the color they were That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage, color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily (they used to be widely…
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Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#69I got through this entire article before I realized it was written by someone I worked with back in my agency days. Beth is an awesome designer with a great eye. Nice to see her on the front page here. Now, to the content: I often wonder how much we have lost with our endless quest for minimalism. We can't even make buttons look like buttons anymore. Affordances have become anemic at times. Designers who think and ca…
I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns, driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes. There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the research back in the day to figure out what color…
The posted article seems like credulous commentary, though.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns, driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes. There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the research back in the day to figure out what color…
> that's why they were the color they were That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage, color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily (they used to be widely…
...And the old Engineer was just saying that that was the area on the spectrum they aimed for, so they found a light that emitted in that wavelength that could be technically implemented and scaled.
Way better work than whoever it is handling this LED nonsense. Why we can't find a diode that we can use to simulate the old spectra would be a fun research project.