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Some colors decorate the world. Others change how we experience it.

Color surrounds us, shaping our moods, defining our histories, and guiding our personal journeys. In our modern visual landscape, color is simply expected. An absence of color is often more striking than any particular shade.

Baker-Miller Pink (#FF91AF)

Baker-Miller Pink, also known as Drunk Tank Pink, was created in the late 1970s as part of Alexander Schauss's research into how color might influence emotional and hormonal changes. Through self-imposed experiments, Schauss observed that one specific shade of pink produced "a marked effect on lowering the heart rate, pulse, and respiration as compared to other colors."

He initially named this unusual pink "P-618." In 1976, he brought the color to the directors of a Seattle naval correctional facility, where certain cell walls were painted to test its effect on prisoners. A subsequent naval report noted that, since the color's introduction, there had been "no incidents of erratic or hostile behavior during the initial phase of confinement." Schauss eventually renamed P-618 "Baker-Miller Pink" in honor of the facility's two directors.

Baker-Miller Pink still appears today in spaces associated with hostility and aggression, where it serves as a psychological deterrent or buffer. It coats the walls of cells in prisons across the United States and Europe, and at the University of Iowa it even lines the visiting team's locker room.

Vantablack (#000100)

Vantablack was first created in a lab in 2014 by Surrey NanoSystems and promoted as the world's blackest black. It was not a traditional tube of paint but rather a densely packed array of carbon nanotubes that absorb 99.96% of light.

In a controversial move, Surrey NanoSystems sold the exclusive rights to Vantablack as an art material to the artist Anish Kapoor. The decision proved immediately divisive, with detractors accusing Kapoor of stealing from the art community itself. Beyond its legal exclusivity, Vantablack is expensive to produce, which only compounds its scarcity.

A true black had eluded artists throughout history, so the idea of a single person denying everyone else access to it struck many as sacrilegious, to say the least. To this day, a shroud of infamy obscures Vantablack's genuinely impressive physical traits.

International Klein Blue (#002FA7)

International Klein Blue is the trademark color of the artist Yves Klein. It was first exhibited in 1957 as part of Klein's "Proposte monocrome, epoca blu" show. Klein had long been fascinated by the color blue and by its emotional and spiritual effects.

He was captivated by the sky and its capacity to serve as both muse and canvas. As he wrote in his Chelsea Hotel Manifesto: "As I lay on the beach in Nice, I began to feel a hatred for the birds flying to and fro in my beautiful cloudless blue sky, because they were trying to pierce holes in the greatest and most beautiful of all my works."

Klein devoted his life and artistic practice to producing a pure blue, working with a synthetic resin distributor to develop a color free from traditional paint binders. Applied with a roller to eliminate any texture, the resulting fields of monochrome blue formed a dense, immersive sea of color.

Klein then famously registered the process for creating International Klein Blue (IKB) with France's National Institute of Industrial Property.

Notably, the color itself is not the exclusive property of Klein or his estate.

These are only a few stories among countless others, but each reveals the power of color and the many reasons people and corporations have tried to claim a shade as their own. The full spectrum of light draws no shortage of those hoping to seize a piece of it, even if only for a moment.