By Georgia Ong (26S03O) and Kunchur Bharat (26A01B)

The Catalyst 

It all started when Bharat and Georgia got into a debate over what colour English was. Bharat claimed it was red, but Georgia insisted that it was yellow, since the file she used for English in primary school was yellow. 

This triggered some questions for us: How do we form these colour associations? Are there any links between the subjects we take and the colours we associate with them? 

Being bored (read: deciding to procrastinate on Promos revision), we decided to find some answers to our questions. 

The Hypothesis

We realised that this “experiment” wasn’t as clear-cut as we thought it was. With so many different colours and so many different people—all with vastly different personalities and experiences—we couldn’t just attach a colour to a subject and assume everyone would share this opinion. 

Instead, we decided to generalise our assumptions into a few broad categories. 

One, syllogistic relations. We tried linking present colour associations of objects typically featured in the subject with the subjects. For instance, we linked Science with the colour green via plants (more specifically, we were thinking about grass). 

Two, associations formed during childhood. We hypothesised that colour associations formed during childhood for subjects like Math and Science (which splits into Biology, Chemistry and Physics in JC), would persist with students; the brain forms many connections based on our childhood experiences, and these linkages would continue to exist as we grow up. 

Three, book colours. For subjects that didn’t exist in primary school, such as Literature and Economics, we hypothesised that some students would link the colour of their texts or lecture books with the subject itself. For instance, the cover of the Literature text being black would mean Literature students associate black with the subject, whilst the Economics books being yellow, green or blue would mean students associate the subject with any of those possible colours.

The Research 

With all our prep work done, we began our research. 65 students were surveyed: a good majority (60%) were from the Science stream, around one-third were from the Arts stream, and 4 from the Hybrid stream. Students were asked about the colour of their subject files in primary school and junior college, and the reasons behind the colour associations at both stages of their lives.

Here is the data. 

The most evident trend we observed was how nearly 50 of our respondents stated that they associated the colour green with Science in primary school. This aligned with our first hypothesis; we observed that much of the primary school science syllabus taught students about plants. 

One ironic finding was that the PSLE Science Guidebook was orange, and the Math Guidebook was the green one. We theorised that by the end of primary school, students would have already established some colour associations, and would not be affected by relatively unimportant differences like book colours. 

As students moved up to JC, the association of green with the Sciences continued — but we also found an increasing number of students who associated the Sciences with blue. 

Research online found that blue is commonly associated with calmness—think, the blue of the sky, the blue of water—all of these that make up the serenity of nature. Transitioning out of primary school Science, the focus on plants decreases as students learn about chemical compounds and forces, making sense of what makes up the world around them. As such, some students opt for a shift from green to blue, which better encompasses Science to them. 

Next, we found that a significant number of students did indeed have colour associations that have persisted since primary school. For math, a subject taken by students across all streams, we found that amongst the 62 students who remembered the colour of the file they used in primary school, exactly half of them, or 31, continued to have the same colour association in JC. 

This may be attributed to a concept known as “Hebbian Learning”—“neurons that fire together, wire together”. When we are first introduced to a new idea, neurons in our body link together to form a network. Subsequently, as we are exposed to the same idea, this network will form again, such that the action or association we have becomes increasingly intuitive. 

The filing system established in students’ primary school years allows for the repeated pairing of subjects and colours. As students grow up, these colour associations formed in their formative years will continue to be ingrained in them. 

Now, for subjects that did not exist in primary school, we found our results to be rather interesting. 

Firstly, our hypothesis for Literature was completely off, with only one of the 46 respondents associating Literature with black. The writers, one of them currently Literature student, puzzled over this for quite a while (see the response below), before they stared at the survey responses and realised most Literature students went off on one thing: good ol’ vibes. 

Next, an overwhelming number of students associated Economics with the colour yellow, also known as the “Market Failure” book colour. Ironically, however, we found multiple differing responses related to the colour of the Economics lecture notes. 

By the concept of Hebbian Learning, the book colours for the subjects do have some degree of relation; whether or not the associations students make are positive or negative, however, is up to the students themselves to determine. 

The Interviews

Of our 65 respondents, we managed to sit down with one of them to probe even deeper into their colour choices. His form responses had earlier piqued our interest with their uniqueness, and his interview was nothing but intriguing. 

Ho Chong Yan (26S06E)

Sitting down with Chong Yan revealed that colour-coding isn’t the default. In our survey, he indicated that in primary school, all of his files were plain white. This pattern continued into JC, where all of his subjects except Physics (blue) and Chemistry (Green) are still associated with white. He elaborated that he found colours to be too confusing to keep track of to be used as an organisational tool, and he preferred to differentiate his subjects through small labels on his file covers. The slight switch in JC came as he chose to prioritise his science subjects over the others, and different colours highlight their increased importance to him. While we found this to be atypical, he shared that even his friends choose not to use colours to differentiate their subjects, opting for plain colours. 

Those who know Chong Yan are also aware that he is a national swimmer, most recently having represented Singapore at the World Aquatics Junior Swimming Championships 2025.  Colours have a deep significance for this aspect of his life, as he chooses to go for either blue or black for his cap and goggles; he confessed that those are lucky colours that he saves for special races. 

His choices for the sciences came purely from intuition, and this is made more interesting by the fact that he had no prior associations in Primary school. 

In his survey response, Chong Yan also indicated that he has synesthesia, a neurological condition in which the stimulation of one sensory pathway triggers an automatic, involuntary experience in a second sensory pathway. Think: “seeing” the smell of petrol as a brown fog, hearing a “whoosh” sound as someone speeds past you, or even perceiving certain days of the week as certain colours. For Chong Yan, this phenomenon is subtle but present, and may be what shaped his unconscious associations of Blue and Green to Physics and Chemistry. 

The Conclusion 

The authors never expected that their little debate over what colour English was would transcend into a Press article. (For anyone curious, the results of the form concluded that Bharat won the debate, with 25 people agreeing that English is red.) 

Everyone’s colour associations are different, with unique perspectives, experiences and choices shaping our opinions. This article helped us to reinforce some pre-existing ideas whilst helping us discover new explanations and reasons to why these colour associations existed, enriching our knowledge on this typically overlooked topic. 

We hope you enjoyed it!