Synesthesia has been said to affect anywhere from 2-25% of the world’s population. Different types of synesthesia have been observed, but the underlying commonality between each type is that connections are made between two different parts of the brain – usually two different senses. For example, someone might hear a sound or a piece of music and associate it with a color, or they might see a color and experience a taste or smell that goes along with it.
Often, synesthesia is more present in younger children but tends to fade and eventually disappear as a person grows older. I remember as a kid thinking that I had other types of synesthesia, but the main form that hasn’t gone away for me is known as “personality synesthesia.” Any person I know well enough has a color that I associate with them. From family members to friends to teachers, a certain color will pop up in my head when I think of them.
Synesthesia is common among “creative” people; visual artists like Van Gogh along with musicians like Lorde, Billie Eilish and countless others have mentioned their synesthesia as driving forces behind their work. Olivia Rodrigo has said that she has “Baby Synesthesia,” probably what she sees as a milder form of it, seeing colors that go with each of her songs.
Another example of a creative who’s talked about having synesthesia is Conan Gray, a musician. Each of his songs, as he explains in a 2017 video, has a color associated with it, and in the production of his songs along with each individual musical element, he tries to match that color.
Gray claims, “It’s extremely specific. It’s not just like, ‘Oh, it’s blue,’ like, it’s a very specific tone and that causes my songwriting process to be very, very analytical, because if a certain word or a certain note isn’t the right color for the song, then I can’t put it in there even if it’s a good lyric or something. I just can’t put it in there because it’s not the right color.”
In a more recent interview with Neol (a Japanese news platform), Conan Gray explains, “When I wrote ‘Crush Culture,’ I just knew that the song was like red, white and pink colored, but just like random orange… I don’t really know why. And when I wrote ‘Maniac,’ I just knew immediately that song is purple. It is a purple song; I can’t explain why. So, when it comes to making the music video, I’m pretty conscious about what colors were in the video because I just know that every song has its own color.
You can see these colors in so many visual elements of his work, from the colors in his music videos and lyric videos to the covers of his albums, to even the lighting in his live performances.
I have the same experience of seeing really specific shades for people. Someone isn’t just green or blue or purple; I could mix paints or search through Pinterest every time to show someone the exact shade of a color that they are.
In my experience, I know the color before I am able to think of or identify the memory the color corresponds with. Usually (if not always), the colors are formed by some type of memory, significant or not, of the person I’m imagining. Some memories are more obvious, while some I have to do some digging for. Eventually, though, I can understand a reason for the color that I see the vast majority of the time. I am guessing that all of the colors have some type of memory at their root, even if I can’t identify what the memory is. Usually, once I’ve had at least 2-3 conversations with someone, I will see a color for them; If I don’t know a person very well, I usually won’t have a color.
Synesthesia isn’t the most highly researched trait, and I think I can find it hard to identify how much of this “personality synesthesia” is unconscious like it’s supposed to be. One of the defining characteristics of synesthesia is that it’s involuntary. You don’t have to think too hard about a color or other type of connection; you just know. Every once in a while I will blank on someone’s color even when I can imagine it eventually, but don’t know if I’m coming up with a color on the spot or just having a processing delay (which I have with a lot of things — even things that I feel like I’m “supposed to” know). Whether or not these associations are really involuntary enough to identify as synesthesia, I thought it would be fun to go into the colors that I see people as and the reasons I might associate these people with a specific color.
- My mom
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My mom has been this pinkish-mauve color in my head for a long time; I had to do some digging into my memory to figure out why. It’s a shade of nail polish that she likes to wear sometimes. I’m not sure if it’s her favorite, but she’s worn it a couple of times, and I haven’t seen it in a lot of other places (even if just because I don’t get my nails done very often). I also see this shade as something that’s soft and protective and relaxed, just like her.
- My dad
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My dad wears navy blue sometimes. In a lot of old photos, my dad is wearing the same dark blue shirt. Getting a little more abstract, I think navy blue is also something that I have perceived as a “masculine” color, and since my dad is one of the men I’ve known the longest, I think this idea plays into it as well.
- My brother
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My brother has an off-white sweatshirt that he likes to wear. He also took a picture of our cat over a background of the same color that I really liked, which I think might be another reason why he is this color. Rarely, but every once in a while, my color for a person will change, and my brother’s color changes the most out of anyone. He gets a lot of wear out of his favorite sweatshirts, so his color in my eyes has changed a couple of times depending on his favorite sweatshirt at the time.
- My friend Reed
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This one’s really easy to trace back because green is his favorite color. He will buy a green version of pretty much anything, from notebooks to jewelry to his backpack to his jackets (I think he has multiple green jackets). If you want his money, sell something in forest green. Reed is keeping the green industry in business singlehandedly. When I first met him though, before all the green, I saw him as a really light icy blue.
- My friend Ashleigh
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Ash’s favorite color is purple. I see her as this really light and even slightly pink-toned purple because it was the color of her backpack in high school. It was also the color of her homecoming dress our senior year.
- Myself
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The color I see myself as is the same color as my water bottle. Green is my favorite color, but it’s really hard for me to pick a shade that I like the best. I think I might see myself as this color because my water bottle is one of the few items that I take with me almost everywhere I go.
As more studies are done, I hope that I can find out more about this trait and hear more about the experiences of others to see if they match with mine. I think the idea of synesthesia is so interesting and such an impressive capability of the human brain. I hope that you enjoyed reading about it and that you might think the same!