“I have a love and passion for the use of colour in decorative design.”
Dr. Van Aardt du Preez, MA, D.Phil, IACC (USA), NCS (Sweden), SAPMA (RSA, is one of an exquisite group of professional colour experts, trained in scientific colour use, and with extensive experience in colour design and decorative colour use.
His scientific background and more, than 30 years in the decorative paint market and colour design helped him to approach colour use in the housing environment from a humane approach. His passion for the right healthy colour use in the decorative design market, encouraged him to extend his decorative colour knowledge and share it with colour loving people.
He enriched his colour knowledge by attending colour courses by:
* The Scandinavian Colour School in Leksand Sweden.
* The Natural Colour Selection Courses in Stockholm Sweden.
* IACC Diploma and the professional title of:
IACC qualified Color Consultant/ Designer (IACC USA)
* Certified Colour Consultant/ Designer— Association of Colour Consultants
/Designers (IACC–USA)
* Numerous colour study visits to : France, Sweden, UK, USA and New Zealand.
* Attended The 9th Congress of the International Colour Association (AIC)
* The Paint Quality Institute, Philadelphia (USA)
* SAPMA (South African Paint Manufacturers Association) qualified paint
technologist.
WHERE DID MY LOVE AND INVOLVEMENT WITH COLOUR START?
My mother was an extremely talented professional trained florist, with a gifted talent to create beautiful colourful flower arrangements and bouquets. Our interior home was a colour living showpiece in the 1950’s and maybe that is where my love for colour use in decorative design was born.
I love the world and environment we are living in, and no wonder I decided to study GEOGRAPHY and further my education in URBAN GEOGRAPY. I specialized in urban housing, and I was the first post graduate student to use colours to present my doctorate degree’s residential research and information in colour.
I resigned my senior post at a local university and ventured into the paint market with the marketing logo that we don’t sell PAINT, we sell COLOUR!
Being used to the scientific background of research and practical approach of presenting information, I also approached the use of colour in the residential market the same. From day one in my new commercial paint business I wanted to make sure that customers are aware of the scientific influence of colour on their lives. I wanted to be the most informative colourist, and therefore I must improve my colour effect and colour affect knowledge.
This led to a course in colour system, the Natural Colour System of the Scandinavian Colour Institute, and a practical colour course of the Scandinavian Colour school in Leksand Sweden.
Thereafter I obtained an IACC Diploma and the professional title of:
IACC qualified Colour Consultant/ Designer (IACC USA), Certified Colour Consultant/ Designer— Association of Colour Consultants/Designers (IACC–USA).
HISTORICAL DECORATIVE COLOUR APPROACH.
Throughout history, our attitude towards colour, whether personal or professional, have been shaped by prevailing tastes and norms as designed by the commercial market, ignoring the science of colour. I was extremely interested in colour design in the living environment and was always looking for scientific ways to help customers in their colour decisions. I believed that deciding on colours is not based on opinions, but on scientific facts.
“Personally, I think we the public have been unconsciously brainwashed by all the lucrative commercial colour palettes, which has robbed us from expressing our own inborn psychological and physiological experiences. “
NOWADAYS DECORATIVE COLOUR APPROACH.
Unfortunately, people are not made aware that colours is a science, just like the human being and that any colour choice should be considered and decided on against the human being’s four-dimensional entities, namely BODY, MIND, SPIRIT/EMOTIONS and BEHAVIOR. In practice this means that the human being must always be seen and considered holistically when advising them in colour decoration. In practice this confirmed that no two people can ever perceive a colour the same.
Unfortunately, the commercial world took advantage of people’s colour insecurity and they cleverly “hijacked” decorative colour, with their never ending “new colours, colour of the year” campaigns, supported by lucrative colour palettes, and colour trends.
DECORATIVE COLOUR AND THE EVER-CHANGING ENVIRONMENT.
NEURO-DESIGN and SCIENCE is proving through measurable data how our environment affects our gene expressions. Your environment is an important part of your identity. Thus, a conscious personal colour evolution is needed to purposefully be controlling and creating environments that shapes us into the person we want to become.
SENSUAL COLOURS. We the humans are graced with fives sophisticated senses namely, sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. These senses are the divines of the human being. You cannot replace them or describe how anyone experience them. Of these five senses, sight (vision) is the sense of living, it creates different emotions and feelings. Colours are like fingerprints, the perceiving of colours differ from person to person, there can’t be a general feeling, yet the commercial world and uninformed paint companies like to add definite feelings and mood influences on certain colours. Unconsciously you allow yourself to be dragged into a predictable lifestyle, allowing to be influenced by the infectious commercial ideas designers usually rely on.
It is the Colour Doctor’s aim to wean designers from following the commercial infectious ideas and recommendations when deciding on decorative colours. You must not adapt to colours, colours must work for you!
With this new “COLOUR DOCTOR” Blogs, I am going to introduce and refresh your colour knowledge with a user-friendly and scientific healthy design approach. Through the years, in the decorative world, we have been influenced and maybe even deceived, that the beauty of a single and collage of colours, is a social accepted decoration and mood creator for an environment.
We live in an age of increasing sensitivity to the use of colour in our homes. We have become quite aware of Interior Design in our lifestyle and social environment. We have to accept that colour will have an effect on your psyche and especially your health.
However, when talking about interior design, peoples’ minds are more focused on designing for aesthetic appearances, in other words, to use colour only as a social beauty design process, and ignore the psychological and physiological influence of colour, which eventually is responsible for a required WELL-BEING.
COLOUR DOCTOR will educate and support you in the understanding of what is colour and the right way to evaluate any colour development sequence, ensuring that you understand what colour is, and how it can influence you, your living environment, and your health.
This healthy colour approach can only be achieved by acknowledge and implementing the process of HUMANE COLOUR DESIGN (Neuro-Design), the only design approach to recognize the health influence of colour. It humanizes the physical environment (space). The human being is the centre of its concern and purpose.
It is wrongly assumed that if an architectural space is aesthetical pleasing, it satisfies the needs and function of the living environment.
For more colour background knowledge, please read my books or enrol in one of my Colour Courses.
