What Do The Colours Red & Green Mean To Us?

Jul 27 2022

What Do The Colours Red & Green Mean To Us?

RED and GREEN are universally recognised as the 2 main colours for traffic control on our highways and road systems - both throughout this country, and also the rest of the world.

That means that it's very easy and intuitive for drivers to recognise RED as STOP and GREEN as GO. That’s why we chose them when designing the Stop'N'Go range.

We wanted colours that were easy to recognise and understand. 

Of course, the STOP signal is the most important.  That’s the one that when it isn’t followed will cause the worst outcomes......at best an incident, and at worst a fatal accident. 

RED is a colour that universally means danger, it’s used in popular culture, art, and everyday signs to warn, alert us, and draw our attention. 

It also doesn’t often occur naturally, it’s very hard to confuse a RED sign with a blue sky or green landscape. 

GREEN is for many indicative of action and movement.  It’s also commonly associated with safety. 

All of this makes choosing RED and GREEN as part of a signalling system the obvious decision. But when we were designing the range we started to look a little closer at why these colours work so well. 

Besides our common associations with these colours there’s also a scientific reason why they work so well in signalling. 

RED and GREEN have the longest wavelengths of all the colours visible to the human eye. 

Simply put this means that you can see them from further away than other colours.  It is also no coincidence that RED has the longest wavelength. It is the easiest colour to see at distance. 

That’s why RED and GREEN are the best colours to make communications and signals clearer. 

It’s not just us that say this….when SUEZ performed pre-launch trials they measured an improvement in signal clarity of 89%. 

Put our theories and science to the test and request a sample pack of the Stop’N’Go gloves to trial in your workplace today.