Stress is a common side effect of the busy lives we all lead, but if not kept in check, too much stress too often, can seriously damage our health, and that of our skin. When we’re stressed, the hormone cortisol is triggered to try and help our bodies cope. While cortisol is very effective in dealing with the perceived threat that we’re under, it can be incredibly detrimental to everything else, whether it be maintaining healthy sleep habits or the look and feel of our skin. 

Some of you might be familiar with what stress looks like on the skin, but if you’re not, it can be useful to know what to look out for. While of course stress can manifest itself in different ways for different people, some common symptoms include increased dehydration and dullness and more frequent flare ups of redness, breakouts and sensitivity.

Although managing stress is a lifelong skill, there are ways we can try and reduce our exposure to stress and limit its impact; using colour carefully is just one of them. Here are Tash’s favourite tips to consider when contemplating what colours to choose.  

Identify Your Palette

While greens and blues are soothing and can help with promoting wellness, injecting a yellow, known for its optimism, or an orange, which can be seriously uplifting, can add real energy to a space. Having a combination of colours in your life will help you have an emotional connection to your surroundings.

Blue - Blue affects us mentally. Light blues create a feeling of calm and can help to reduce mental stress.

White - White creates a feeling of calmness. Warm whites (with a hint of yellow) create a calm, soothing, airy feel to any space. This warm neutral also balances out the sunlight throughout the day making it a very calming colour.

Green - Green creates a feeling of harmony, peace, and reassurance. It is restorative, restful, and tranquil.

Going Green

The psychology behind the colour green is that it's the colour of balance. Having it in your home, it brings in new life, peaceful, restful, it's got harmony and balance. All Lick greens inspire wellness. Having a green kitchen will subconsciously inspire you to eat more healthily. Your eyes don't have to adjust to green, so it's a very restful colour for your eyes, so great for the home office. Green has the intellect of blue and the emotion of yellow and it's the colour of the balance of the mind, body and emotions.

Grey Days

Light greys (like our Grey 01) with subtle blue undertones can also inject a sense of calm into a room, despite the assumption that grey is dreary and gloomy. Light grey can actually create a haven that you can retreat into.

Paint It Pink 

Pinks are cheerful. Walking into a pink room is like being enveloped in the biggest hug. Lighter pinks with slight touches of grey also make a room feel calm and inviting. Pinks have a natural warmth and reflect natural sunlight really well. Our Pink 04 (a pink with delicate grey undertones) is basically the colour of cuddles. Darker variations such as deep reds can have a cocooning effect in smaller rooms, which make them very cosy if you want to snuggle up.