My walls are purple. My brand is purple. My creative life has been wrapped in shades of deep violet and plum for as long as I can remember. People ask me about it sometimes — why purple, why always purple — and I have given different answers at different times. But the truest answer is the one I have arrived at slowly, over years of paying attention to what the colour actually does in me and around me.
Purple is the colour of becoming. And I mean that in a very specific way.
What Colour Actually Does
Colour is not just aesthetic. It is physiological. Different wavelengths of light affect the nervous system in measurable ways — red activates and alerts, blue calms and slows, yellow energizes and stimulates. These are not arbitrary associations. They are the result of how the human visual system processes different frequencies of light and translates them into neurological and hormonal responses.
Purple sits at the far end of the visible spectrum, just before ultraviolet — the light we cannot see. It is the colour of the threshold. Of the place where the visible meets the invisible. Of the boundary between what we know and what we are moving toward.
In colour psychology, purple is consistently associated with transformation, spirituality, creativity, and the unconscious. It is the colour of liminal space — the in-between, the not-yet, the becoming. It is not the colour of arrival. It is the colour of the journey toward arrival.
What Purple Has Meant in Human History
Across cultures and centuries, purple has been the colour of the sacred and the significant. In ancient Rome, purple dye was so expensive to produce — it came from the murex sea snail, and thousands of snails were required to produce a single ounce of dye — that it was reserved for emperors and the highest-ranking officials. To wear purple was to announce that you occupied a position of extraordinary significance.
In the Christian tradition, purple is the colour of Advent and Lent — the seasons of waiting, preparation, and transformation. It is worn during the times of becoming, not the times of arrival. Christmas and Easter, the celebrations of what has been accomplished, use white and gold. Purple belongs to the in-between.
In many Indigenous and spiritual traditions, purple and violet are associated with the crown chakra — the energy centre at the top of the head that governs connection to the divine, to higher consciousness, to the part of the self that is larger than the individual ego. It is the colour of the place where the personal meets the universal.
Why I Chose It
When I built my creative world, I did not choose purple deliberately. It chose me, in the way that the things most true to us often do — not through analysis but through recognition. I was drawn to it before I understood why. I surrounded myself with it before I had language for what it meant.
What I understand now is that purple is the colour of the creative life I am living. Not the finished product, not the polished album or the published book, but the ongoing process of making and becoming and making again. The creative life is always in transition. You finish one thing and begin another. You arrive somewhere and immediately discover that there is further to go. You become something and then discover that becoming is not a destination but a direction.
Purple holds that. It is comfortable with the in-between. It does not demand resolution.
What Your Colours Tell You
I think the colours we are drawn to tell us something about where we are and what we need. Not in a rigid or prescriptive way — this is not a system, just an observation. But the colours that feel like home, that you return to without thinking, that make you feel more like yourself — those colours are worth paying attention to.
If you are drawn to blue, perhaps you are seeking calm, clarity, the spaciousness of open sky. If you are drawn to green, perhaps you are in a season of growth, of returning to something natural and essential. If you are drawn to red, perhaps you are in a season of urgency, of action, of claiming your place in the world.
And if you are drawn to purple — if you find yourself reaching for the deep violet, the rich plum, the colour of the threshold — perhaps you are in a season of becoming. Of being in the in-between. Of trusting the process even when the destination is not yet visible.
That is a good place to be. It is, in fact, the only place where real transformation happens.
Emy J is a writer, musician, and creator based in Ottawa, Ontario. Deep purple is the colour of her creative world. Visit emyj888.com to explore her music and books.