10/17/2025
Why does our brain crave autumn colours like burnt orange, deep red, and golden yellow? 🍂 Science offers some clues:
A longitudinal study found that people’s preferences for “leaf colours” increase through fall, peaking when trees are most vivid. As environment shifts to those warm hues, they trigger more positive affect.(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2041669517742177)
Colours like orange/red – high saturation, strong contrast – excite the visual cortex, grabbing attention and boosting mood. (https://www.esi-frankfurt.de/news/2022-08-25_stauch_humangammacolor/)
Our brains also link these hues to “fall-entities” (pumpkin spice, holidays, changing leaves). Those associations make the colours emotionally powerful through associative learning. The more we like those fall moments, the more we like their colours. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29230276/)
Fall colours aren’t just pretty—they’re wired into our brains to comfort, energize, and reconnect us. 🍁
