A Study on Colour-Emotion Association for Happiness Among the Indian Youth Using Artificial Intelligence

The relationship between colour and emotion is complex and often symbolic in the human mind, resembling a parabolic curve that connects specific colours to particular emotional states. This connection means that colours can evoke emotions, making it vital for various industries, including fashion, to understand how people, especially the younger (18–24 age) generation, perceive these associations. Colour emotion association is also region and culture-specific. This research paper aims to find the association of colour preference to the emotion of happiness by extracting facial expressions as emotions using a pre-trained deep learning model and adapting a semantic segmentation approach for identifying dominant colours from garments (T-shirts). This study utilized 1642 images collected from four different cities in India over a period of two years to detect the association. The experimental results highlight that colours such as black, yellow, pink, and blue are associated with positive emotions, particularly happiness, within the Indian cultural context. These findings provide valuable insights for retailers to incorporate these colours into future garment designs strategically to evoke positive emotions.