Over the years, studies have attempted to assign emotional qualifiers to various colours. Red, they have found, is most often associated with boldness, courage, passion, energy and urgency.

As not only a primary colour, but one to which the human eye is particularly sensitive, red is an immediate attention-grabber. For example, as infants develop the ability to distinguish colour, they see red first – whereas the ability to distinguish other hues and subtle differences in shade comes later.