How Colour Affects Pricing: Why Art Collectors Pay More for Blue
Economists from HSE University, St Petersburg State University, and the University of Florida have found which colours in abstract paintings increase their market value. An analysis of thousands of canvases sold at auctions revealed that buyers place a higher value on blue and favour bright, saturated palettes, while showing less appreciation for traditional colour schemes. The article has been published in Information Systems Frontiers.
The valuation of artwork remains one of the mysteries of cultural economics: there is still no clear explanation for why some paintings sell for higher prices than others. Abstract art raises the most questions, since its value is not tied to realistic technique or recognisable subject matter. Until now, the culture of art pricing has relied primarily on traditional factors such as the artist’s name, the size of the canvas, provenance, and the reputation of the gallery. However, Valeria Kolycheva and Dmitry Grigoriev from the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences, along with Maksim Borisov from St Petersburg State University and Alexander Semenov from the University of Florida, have suggested that the colours used by artists may play an important role in determining the price of abstract paintings.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers analysed nearly 4,000 abstract paintings sold at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The sample included works by 13 artists, ranging from Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró to Mark Rothko and Franz Kline, with the average lot selling for nearly $12 million. The researchers looked at 42 different features of the paintings, such as size, material, signature, exhibition history, mentions in the literature, and the number of previous owners. But their main focus was on colour: they considered how many distinct colour segments a painting contained, how saturated and bright the tones were, and mathematically calculated the palette’s complexity. This measure captured not only how many colours the artist used, but also how different those colours were from one another.
The authors also set out to test whether the value of a painting was influenced by its alignment with Itten's colour wheel—a well-known diagram of colour harmony used to create complementary palettes. A classic tool of painting, the colour wheel remains widely used today, including in the training of artists. There are several Itten palettes, each based on the relationship between colours positioned at different distances around the colour wheel.
The study found that traditional factors had the greatest impact on price: the size of the canvas, the use of oil paint, and the number of exhibitions. The influence of colour was less straightforward. For the most part, it had little effect on a painting’s value—except when the colour blue was involved.
Blue is the only colour that consistently correlates with higher artwork prices. This finding echoes earlier observations of Picasso’s work, as his Blue Period paintings commanded significantly higher prices.
Valeria Kolycheva
'In art, the colour blue is often seen as a symbol of the spirit. In 1911, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc founded Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), an artistic group. Kandinsky later became a pioneer of abstract art, refining the theory of abstract painting and the role of colour in it,' says Valeria Kolycheva, Associate Professor at the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences.
Interestingly, Itten’s colour harmony proves to be a weak predictor of price differences in abstract art. Of the six schemes, only the analogue triad proved significant—a combination of three colours positioned side by side on the colour wheel. The analogue triad avoids sharp contrasts and visual tension, instead creating a sense of harmony and tranquillity. All other schemes that create more complex colour palettes on the canvas—contrasting, classical, and complementary—proved to be statistically insignificant. The more intricate and 'noisy' the palette—the more colours a painter uses in small segments—the lower the price buyers are willing to pay.
Buyers also tend not to recognise or value Itten’s harmonious schemes. What matters more to them is visual diversity, achieved through vibrant, saturated colours and clearly defined colour segments.
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