Related synesthesia types: person-colour
and perceived emotion-to-colour
Another type of synesthesia that is similar to personality-colour in many aspects but different in others and much more common is person-colour, where the synesthete only sees or perceives colours for people they already know (friends, family etc.). Go to the page on person-colour synesthesia.
There is also another type that shows similarities with personality-colour synesthesia and can coexist with it, giving rise to mixes or combinations of colours: perceived emotion-to-colour synesthesia, which is triggered by the emotions intuitively perceived in the person being observed. Go to the page on perceived emotion-to-colour synesthesia
Personality-colour synesthesia
is only triggered by the sensed or perceived
personality of the person being observed: it is not triggered by their physical
appearance or by the synesthete’s relationship with that person (as is the case
for person-colour), or by emotions they perceive them to be feeling. It
is triggered as soon as the synesthete sees or meets the person in question and
changes as they get to know them better, with more colours, more nuances, a
richer pallet and perhaps slight variations as time goes by.
People with a
strongly-expressed synesthesia of this type (basically projector synesthetes)
often say they feel confused and overloaded by the huge amounts of colours they
see when they enter a crowded place such as a shopping centre or a packed
event.
Here
are some descriptions written by people with this type of synesthesia:
This synesthete describes the large number of different colours and combinations they have for the different personalities of the people they meet, how the colours subtly interact and how they read them.
“I associate peoples personalities with
colors. People have multiple colors. In fact, most people have 4-6. No one has
the same combination and upon seeing them, I can immediately tell their
dominant color. As I talk to them I can begin to read their undertones as well.
(…) I use 11 colors in my scale and each corresponds to general traits. Red is
dominance, orange is humour, yellow is peacemaking, green is friendship, blue
is empathy, indigo is creativity, purple is an analytical perspective (think
engineering), black is tramua, white is chivalry, pink is youth, brown is
protectiveness, and grey is neutrality/unbiased viewpoint. Each person's colors
will be variations of these basic traits based on the tone, shade, or hue of
the color.”
The same
person also explains their colour perceptions via texts and for personages who
are not actually real life people:
“I can also
kind of tell people's colors over text as well though it is a little harder to
tell and is less accurate. (…) It’s not limited to living people either.
Characters in books or movies also have colors, albeit usually less than a
living person though.”
(Source: This post on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2020.)
And here is someone who describes the sensory hyperstimulation caused by personality-colour synesthesia that can easily become overwhelming in social or crowd situations:
“In my situation it has manifested itself in music/colors for my entire life, as well as sight/colors that surround people. It is very hard for me to enter a large room with many people because of the color overload. My first visit to Times Square was almost too overwhelming! In the Sistine Chapel I had to close my mind to the crowd and concentrate on the ceiling to avoid overload.”
(Source: a comment in the blog Colourful Language. 2009.)
Related synesthesia types:
Person-colour (people you know – friends, family, etc. – trigger a colour concurrent)
Aura synesthesia (projective personality-colour synesthesia)
Perceived emotion-colour/smell/taste/touch
Personality-smell and personality-taste
The British English spelling of this type is personality-colour synaesthesia.
This page last updated: 10 May 2026.
I am 43 years old and I am healing from a concussion and it seems since having this concussion I kept seeing colors especially when I hear music and I also see colors when I look at people. I was at a women’s retreat and at times I was overwhelmed due to all the auras of colors. I often feel confuse as this is a new diagnosis and I am struggling with what does the colors mean!! Can some one please help me make sense of this ?
ReplyDeleteHello, and sorry about the late reply!
DeleteI hope you are doing OK and coming to terms with your situation and the appearance of your colours. All of that together sounds tough to cope with. I hope you’re getting help from your neurologist or doctor and that they’re informing you well about what’s happening and what to expect. I have to say that I don’t have a lot of knowledge about acquired synsthesia like yours, as this website is about the types that people have had naturally all their lives and how they manifest, and it is usually quite different when synesthesia results from a brain lesion. The synesthesia can appear very strongly in that case, it can be projective and not just in the mind’s eye, and it isn’t usually pleasant, as natural synesthesia is, especially as you have to come to terms with new perceptions you’ve never had before and which can be invasive, especially at the start.
As to the “meaning” of the colours you ask about, they would only have “meaning” if you were a natural synesthete rather than it having arisen from a brain injury. That isn’t impossible of course: if you happen to have noted that your colour perceptions with music and people are not random and changing but instead consistent and seem “logical” to you in some way, as if they’d always been there but you just hadn’t been able to see them so clearly, there is a possibility that you might already have been one but just never noticed before as a very weak synesthesia has now become much stronger. Although that’s not the most likely situation, it is possible. The meaning of the colours, in that case, would be something totally specific to you and only you, as they mean something different to each synesthete, and you’d have to work it out by thinking about which person, or which sound/type of music etc. is accompanied by which colour, and what they have in common. If that’s the case you’ll soon start to see it.
If it isn’t the case, then the colours won’t have a meaning, and you would find that they were random and unpredictable rather than corresponding to particular personality types or timbres/notes/types of music etc. In that case the best thing is to look for signs of it weakening, as after the initial phase of your brain “reorganising” itself and strong onset of symptoms, the most likely scenario – although different outcomes are possible of course – is that it will gradually subside, partially or totally, over time.