What's the most popular color in the world?

In between are a million different colors of roses. Which color is the most popular in the world?

Humans' favorite color isn't always the same. Blue was the most popular color in the world according to a survey. A survey of 30,000 people in 100 countries found deep teal to be the most popular color. The answer varies depending on the year, survey method and population sample.

Culture has a large influence on color preferences. A study was done in the journal Perception to compare the colors of people in three different cultures. The Hadza are a group of people who live in Africa. The preferred colors of these cultures differed greatly.

Blue is rare in nature.

Life experiences and socializing can affect color preference. Pink is considered a "girl's color" in Western culture, while blue is seen as a boy's color. A study in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior found that men preferred blue while women preferred red, purple and pink. The gender divide in families with only sons was more pronounced than in families with girls. The Perception study found that the Hadza's color preferences were almost the same between men and women.

It seems that the perception of colors is universal.

Researchers with the World Color Survey undertook an incredibly broad survey of the color terms in over 100 languages. Benjamin Lee Whorf articulated the hypothesis in the MIT Technology Review in 1940 that nature and language are related. A defining framework for language is a reporting device.

Language affects the perception of reality.

That's not what the survey found. The survey found that people all over the world named their colors the same way. If you show people different colors in English that are close to the same color in other languages, they will all be described by the same word. Across cultures, speakers place the boundary between red, blue, yellow and green in the same place. The point where blue bleeds into green, or yellow into orange, was demarcated in different parts of the world.

It was originally published on Live Science on July 31, 2012