I don't dislike any of the colors that were once my favorite but it does change every couple of years - yellow then mint green then red now turquoise. i'm sure a year from now it'll be something different. hahaha, i've painted my bedroom too many times to count!

For most of my life I've been attracted to bright hughes in my living space, mixing and matching them all together in one room. I felt bright periwinkle walls with a chartreuse armoire and bright yellow accent lamps made for a happy space. I still find bright colors playful, but for me and my clients, I prefer to stick with muted, more neutral tones (at least with the shell of a room - walls, floor, ceiling, countertops) and add a pop of color as an accent whether it's in a comfy chair, a rug, throw pillows (especially if we want to change the look of the room for each season) or pendant lamps. My favorite accent color right now is vintage yellow! It looks SO great with grays, white, black, and chocolate! And, it translates so well between seasons. I even started a Pinterest page focusing just on vintage yellow:

http://pinterest.com/sarboa/vintage-yellow/

And I agree, you can put colors in your living space that you might not necessarily wear. Vintage yellow is DEFINITELY an example of that!

This was a fun throw-back post for me. THANKS!

Oh my... When I was 12 I painted my room my (then) favorite color: tennis ball yellow. Now, I hate yellow. The color makes me look sick, and I generally cannot find good uses for it much anymore.

Though my tastes have changed, it's not as dramatic as it seems: my favorites were brights when I was younger - specifically blue, green, and yellow. I've always had secondary favorites of red and orange, but not in large areas as much as the others.
Now, my tastes have shifted to more jewel tones: purples, blues, and greens, with accents of red and orange.

When I decorate, I prefer the trimmings, floor, and furniture to be neutral, that way I can spread some color on the walls and throughout the accents while still feeling grounded.

I'm a redhead, and all my homes have had rose colored walls. All of them. I get the same paint colors for the walls and trim every time I move. Benjamin Moore of course. It sure does make it simple.

I've always responded with strong emotion to color. I've had several color phases. Each one lasts for years. I never came to dislike a color that had been a favorite, it just became less attractive and was replaced. Looking back, my favorite colors seem to correspond to life phases that changed about the same times. Although unconscious on my part, it seems a fine idea that some people deliberately change palettes, perfumes, hair styles, etc., to celebrate milestones.

yes..When my kids were tiny and I was surrounded by primary colored plastic toys (along with all of the noise and chaos that comes with very small children) I craved the serenity of a peaceful, visually quiet monchromatic home. I think I actually found some solace in my muted home. Now that they are older (and our home is quieter and no longer littered with plastic toys), I have found that I like bringing more of my own bold color choices into our home, and I really enjoy the color!

Is there a corrolation between the amount of visual and audio 'noise' some of us can handle?

I used to always decorate in blues. I wouldn't even consider blue my favorite color, and I tend to wear warm tones. My home colors were always cool though.

Just within the past few years I have started using warmer colors. I still have a lot of blue around, as accents (because I wasn't about to get rid of everything just because it was blue!), and I think all of our bedrooms have blue in them, to greater or lesser degrees. That wasn't planned, but I do think I like having warmer colors in living areas and cooler colors in sleeping areas (also, our downstairs has wood trim, but upstairs it is painted white).

And 7paul, people absolutely have different levels of visual noise they can tolerate. We have to keep my middle daughter's bedroom very sparse, or she can't calm down and sleep.

7paul I totally think that there is a corrolation! I had my own business (a chocolate and candy store) and the visual and audio noise was enormous (as well as the stress!). I could only handle soft muted neutral colors when I got home, mostly white and beige. Now that I have a more "quiet" job I am starting to add a little more color to my home.

I took a color theory class at UCLA Extension and came away with a whole new appreciation and understanding of color and colors' relationships to each other. That helped my color taste evolve; I highly recommend doing something like that. It was a surprising amount of work--lots of mixing small quantities of paint, but it was worth it.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post and comments. My favorite color at any one time usually also symbolized a quality I sought to develop. Early on, blue represented the peace I wanted, and decades later red represented strength. It wasn't something I'd read to do, used like a lucky charm is used, or even deliberate. It was more a gut level attraction.

I used to love warm color. I have lived with red, dark brown, beige. After a while color started irritating me.
Now I'm living with all white (on the walls) and a very light grey (entryway and staircase). I used a pearl finish on the walls to make sure they are easily washable (I have 3 boys).

I love the calm of a white space and that everything pops against it.

I would hope so. Everything else about me has evolved.

I used to like much more vivid colors in my home; when I first moved into a place I could paint it was GOLDEN YELLOW and SAGE GREEN and PUMPKIN...and we enjoyed it. But now, in our third house, we are taking more cues from the house and the architecture itself. It is a 1929 bungalow with original woodwork--colors that are more greyed out work better and bring the wood work to life.

I assume in our next house, with different light and different architectural detail, the colors will be different still.

Yes. As I've gotten older, I've become more open to trying new, bolder colors. For so long, I was only interested in neutrals.

The more time passes, the less I like color and the more I like texture. Now I don't feel at home unless there's a good mix of wood, metal, upholstery, leather, etc. The materials start to matter.

Absolutely. I always have favorite colors for spaces, but they tend to travel in pairs, and shift around on their own. A running favorite of mine is coral red plus aqua green - in college, I wanted both colors loud, and everywhere. Now, I see the value in using muted versions of those colors, or even using grays or other neutrals primarily, and using my favorite red/green duo in pops of color to accent the space. Sometimes, too, they shift - I fall for more turquoises than aquas, or more clementines than coral reds.

Growing up it was red. Then I hated two colors, orange and green. As I started dreaming of living in New York City, and once I got there, I was all about black and still hated orange and green. Then I moved to Los Angeles, took up knitting, and found myself forever pining after yarn in gorgeous shades of orange or green. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. They'd become my favorite colors, with orange in the top slot. Turquoise is edging out green these days, but I still love it. I wonder what shifts in us to allow our color preferences to change so drastically. I guess it is evolution.

I echo everything "Asticat" and "Miami's Elaine" said...

I never stop liking certain color palettes, but I outgrow my ardent obsession for them. My color phases correspond to life phases, as well...and I do mark these as milestones in my head.

I think my color taste has definitely changed. It was once very simple and kept growing to include more colors. Now there aren't many colors I don't like. :) It's especially fun to find different color combos that never caught my eye before.

I definitely used to dislike certain colors - pastels in particular, pinks more specifically. But over the years have learned not to attach an emotional reaction to colors and just realize whatever is most appropriate to the space is the best color. So anything is fair game now even though I do *like* certain colors more than others. (Greens, greens, greens!!) It's all about context when working with design.

I dislike and avoid pastels, especially pink, for the usual reasons, like other commenters have written. I hadn't thought about how people in arts and design must evolve past early dislikes in order to make full use of color options and fashions in their professions. Interesting.

I didn't really have a particular favorite color as a kid but I did have a distinct hatred of neon and muddy colors (the neon colors always ended up in the worst spot in my crayon holder). I then went through this phase where I didn't like yellow. I've since made my peace with (select shades of) yellow and I've even owned up to bright pinks and yellows being actually kind of flattering. The fact that I stare at these colors all day at work probably has something to do with it.

I'm a blue girl. I tend to have a lot of varying colors in my home and in my closet. I enjoy it because I have light ivory skin, dark hair, and mood blue eyes. It works best in clothes and best in calming me. I also use vibrant green (not a fan of olive or sage) and any shade of purple but burple.

When I moved into my first apartment I painted my kitchen right before I moved. It was this amazing Behr color because the landlady has chosen Oops Neon Home Depot Orange. No primer and the color had been a dark blue or black before that. Out of my own pocket, I painted the color to something far more liveable. It even matched this awful marigold color on the walls in the rest of the place that hadn't been painted in at least 4 years through wear and tear. I did it on my own dime because the layout was shotgun style, but with a bathroom/closet off to the side that hadn't been updated in 60 years. I could see out the front or back door to the other.

Even in my last apartment, I had a lot of browns, blues, greens and blacks. I love using classic colors that I can move from one place to another. But I rarely if ever use orange and yellow. I look horrible in it and I want to feel like my place represents me. I started adding more pinks, too. Since the lovely pinkish raspberry color's arrival anyway.

Yes! When my husband and I bought our home almost 5 years ago we painted every room in varying shades of tan, and all of our furnishings & accessories were also either tan, khaki, white, brown or black. 5 days ago we purchased the most amazing cornflower blue and cream embroidered Norwalk couch from a local consignment store and this is just the most recent addition to our evolving colorful home. Sometime after my almost 3 year old turned 1 I started craving color, and we painted an accent wall in his room intense teal by Behr. Throughout we have been gradually adding yellow (my favorite color), blue and green in wall color, accessories and accents. It's not only that my color preference has changed but my entire style and that of my husband, he is even allowing my floral obsession to enter into the picture.

from black to orange in 60 seconds........

How wonderful your husband's on board. When I would change colors or rearrange the furniture decades ago, my husband would try to make me promise it was the very last time I would do so! I wouldn't promise. Happily, over time we learned to compromise.

The comments for this post are so INTERESTING. I associate life phases with the color obsessions that went with them. We have a creamy yellow door as a souvenir from the last time I was pregnant, for one thing.

When we bought our house, we painted rooms all the colors we loved. Five years later, I am wiser about my own personality - I evolve, and then my walls don't work anymore. So now we have all white walls and that leaves us free to have a hot pink duvet for a while, then a plain flax one...whatever.

The truth is, I love color. I have passing favorites for a few years, but color...so lovely, hard to do properly in interiors, but all colors!

I agree that a noisier daily life calls for peace at home, and vice versa. I have those Le Creuset pots in several of the colors they make, and there is this huge aqua soup pot that...you know, people come over and TALK about the color of that thing, how beautiful it is. Color is a funny thing. I love how new phases are always on the way.

Definitely - my color preference is always evolving. I was attracted to green, earthy colors in my youth. Then in college, I went for bright bold colors, like red and orange. These days, I'm more attracted to blues and muted, cool colors again.