Emotion-colour, emotion-shape and emotion-texture synesthesia

An alternative name for emotion-colour synesthesia is "coloured emotions"

Note: this page is about synesthetic experiences evoked by the synesthete’s own emotions, not those observed in other people. To find out more about this latter type, see the page Perceived emotion-to-colour (and other concurrents).

This type of synesthesia consists of having visual experiences of colour (or colour and shape) in response to different emotions. Some synesthetes actually see these visual concurrents physically in front of them (projector synesthetes), while others, the majority, only see them in their mind’s eye (associator synesthetes). They may take the form of a transparent colour field like an overlay, tinting their vision, they may resemble a cloud or mist, or the synesthete may feel that the colour is irradiating out of a particular part of the body, for example. When the colours also have shape it is normally a simple or complex geometrical figure, either single or multiple. In general it is not a very common type: in Sean Day's study on 1,143 synesthetes, 3.24% reported having visual experiences in response to emotions. The colours and/or shapes perceived for each emotion are consistent, and they are also idiosyncratic, varying greatly from person to person. They are not guided by conventional correspondences such as red=anger or passion, grey=seriousness or boredom, although they may occasionally coincide. (A colour semiology chart explaining the traditional connotations symbolised by each colour can be consulted in this interesting article). It is interesting to note that this type is often reported by synesthetes on the autism spectrum, who sometimes say that although they have difficulty in recognising and describing their emotions, they perceive them clearly as having a certain colour scheme, and this can ultimately help them to classify their emotions and better understand their variety and complexity. 

Here are some descriptions written by people with this type of synesthesia:

Emotion-colour

These two people describe perceptions of translucent colours that appear as floating in space or covering objects when a specific emotion is felt:  

“When I'm happy I see a blue color floating in the air. It's slightly transparent and usually lasts only for a second or two. I see yellow the same way usually when doing chores or during an endless math lesson. I see magenta when having really negative emotions.”

(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2016.)

“Sometimes when someone hugs me and I feel safe or protected, then everything is covered in a light, translucent cyan. When I’m feeling loved the world is pinker than usual (a very pale pink). When I’m angry it’s a bright but translucent red hue around everything.”

(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2019.)

"Stress", by nottellingunosytwat, in this post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2021.

Here is an account by another emotion-colour synesthete who lists some of the colours that automatically and consistently correspond to particular emotions and has also been able to illustrate the form in which they appear:

"When I feel like I'm being forced to do something, the color I see is white, so it lowers the contrast of everything I see. This doesn't happen with other emotion colors, such as ultramarine for relaxation. In that case, I see everything, especially white walls, a shade of ultramarine, which still makes it easy to see everything. White is the only color that makes it harder to see. (...)

Relaxation is ultramarine. (...) Fatherliness is lime. Concentration is emerald. Frantic is alternating lime and red. Tenderness is amber. (...)

There are others, but those are the ones I can list off the top of my head.

Image: Taric25

If I feel very relaxed when I close my eyes, this is exactly what I see.

(Source: This comment and this post/comment on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2022.)

 Emotion-colour/shape

Spanish artist Pepa Salas Vilar perceives that she is constantly surrounded by colours and shapes. If she chooses to focus on them they become very tangible and can be described in great detail. In this example she talks about preparing to travel, which creates an array of different emotions: stress, nerves, the feeling of leaving her home and family behind and the fond farewell. Each of these separate emotions evokes different colours and shapes.

“The journey…. the journey always stresses me out, and stress appears to me as a deluge of little watery red spheres like caviar that crash into me and explode one by one. My emotions grow as I pack my suitcase. The idea of departure starts as carmine red, and when the time actually comes it has turned into an opaque, amorphous white goodbye. The feeling of saying goodbye is a whitish-grey mist that engulfs me, expanding all around me until it touches the rest of my family.”

(Source: Pepa Salas Vilar, cited in the book “Sinestesia. El color de las palabras, el sabor de la música, el lugar del tiempo…” by Alicia Callejas and Juan Lupiáñez, pub. Alianza Editorial 2012. Original in Spanish.)

"Worry” and “Scared”, by synesthete artist Ailsa Brims in her blog Peppermint Sea (blog now closed)

Here is another example of how colour and shape perceptions can form a normal, conscious part of an emotion-to-colour synesthete’s surrounding environment:

“I have something like hallucination since my first memory. It's colorful bubbles in the air. … The size, color, shape and movement of the bubbles change according to my mood. For example, when I feel happy, the bubbles are small, yellow and move upward in the air. When I'm angry, the bubbles move faster from left to right.”

(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2019.)

Emotion-colour synesthesia can have differing degrees of intensity: it can be practically unnoticeable, it can form a conscious part of everyday life (as in the previous two examples) or it can feel intense and powerful, when the emotions are also strong. The description that follows is about an extreme situation and how it affected the strength of the synesthetic perceptions:

“As my emotions get stronger, so do the visions I see in my mind. This is especially true for negative emotions, for example extreme fear. For example, in one instance, I have suffered severe panic attack because of the fear I was facing. All I could see were these glowing white branches that were gently growing into beautiful shapes, and it was as vivid as real life. It did not help me calm down tho lol. On the other hand, sadness looks like metallic-grey fog. Happiness is like cubes, spheres and pyramids coated in vaporwave shade of purple.”

(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2019.)

"Disturbing feelings", by Bettina in the Gallery on the Sensequence website

Emotion-texture

It is also possible for emotions to be consistently and consciously associated with a particular texture, which can be visualised or felt as a perception. Although the texture may form part of a colour concurrent, some synesthetes may feel it as just texture alone, without any inherent colour at all: 

“When I have certain emotions I start getting flashes of textures. Especially when I am anxious, in my head a rough leathery texture to smooth peach texture keeps flashing. (…)

The texture isn’t something I am feeling on my skin, or just visually in my head, it's almost as if I am a part of it. 

[Excitement] feels like the hairy tingling you get when you almost touch something staticky. [Depression] feels like hard clay.”

(Source: This post/comment on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2023.) 

For the case of actual tactile sensations being felt in the body or on the skin, with or without a specific textural component, see the page on Emotion-tactile synesthesia.

Emotion-image: could it be considered synesthesia too?

In a few cases, figurative images are pictured in response to emotions, with feelings being consistently perceived as objects, scenes, places or people. This might be simply an associative process, or there could perhaps be a case for considering it a variant of emotion-to-shape synesthesia. Here is an example:

"My emotions are physical things. Like anxiety is a knotted hollow tube. Joy is like a belt around my lower back, and so forth. They’re real to me, but when I asked others if they experience this, they say no."

(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2020.)

This next description could even be connected with the phenomenon of personification, as the concurrents take the form of specific people. However, this case does seem to have key differences from synesthetic personification, as it seems to be exclusively visual rather than taking the form of in-depth perceptions of human characteristics like personality, social status, hobbies, tastes or relationships with others. As visual synesthetic concurrents tend to be abstract – colours, shapes, textures – and not pictorial, it might be more logical to consider these particular pairings strong, consistent associations rather than synesthesia. If personality is perceived, it may of course be a variant involving personification of the emotions, similar to ordinal linguistic personification.

In case of doubt, it is always interesting to know if the person who perceives the images has other types of synesthesia, as in a non-synesthete it would be much more likely that perceptions of this type are merely ingrained associations.

In this specific case, it appears that the person does not have any other types of synesthesia. Even so, the description is interesting, evocative and rather mysterious:

“For as long as I remember, when I feel certain emotions strongly or think back on a memory where I felt such an emotion strongly, I picture a character at the same time.

For example, excitement is a dark-skinned young woman, frizzy hair, dyed a pastel rainbow at the bottom, wearing a purple tank top and black denim shorts, with a unicorn horn headband. Anger is a young pale-skinned man with fawn brown hair, wearing a red flannel shirt. His body cuts off at the torso and has no arms, and he has floating purple hands.”

(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2020.)

Related types of synesthesia:

Emotion-smell and emotion-taste

Emotion-tactile

Emotion-sound

Perceived emotion-to-colour (and other concurrents)

Pain-colour/shape/image

More cases / readers' comments: read all the comments on this article here

(See the latest comments, received in 2026, below. Or follow the above link for access to all the reader comments describing their own experiences: it makes interesting reading)

This page last updated: 12 May 2026