[HN Gopher] Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
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Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 462 points
Date : 2026-03-25 15:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (bethmathews.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bethmathews.substack.com)
| d--b wrote:
| Ha, I am very proud that I made that discovery independently as
| well. In the Light vs Dark theme, I settled on a light greyish
| green that is somewhat close to the one described here. It really
| does reduce eye fatigue.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Reminds me of Go Away Green -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Away_Green
| dylan604 wrote:
| Go Away reads to me as a command to the viewer to go away
| rather than the intended "we want the object to go away from
| the viewer's thoughts". If they were okay with a phrase like Go
| Away Green, why not something like Hidden View Green,
| Irrelevant Green, Don't Look Here Green, etc. Some PR
| department would have a field day
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Prob because Go Away Green sounds way cooler than all of
| those and it's not a user facing term anyways.
| ortusdux wrote:
| A gas station near me painted their bollards this color. I've
| wondered if this would be a credible legal defense for someone
| that accidentally backed into them.
| jcalx wrote:
| Reminds me of turquoise cockpits [0], another workspace where
| visual fatigue considerations are important.
|
| [0] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16434/why-
| are-r...
| somat wrote:
| I wonder if the designers of cold war soviet planes read the same
| color theory because their cockpits are always a very particular
| indescribable shade of green. There were also very specific
| colors for subsystems, yellow for fuel, purple for hydraulics
| etc. Much more than the contemporary US designs.
| Loughla wrote:
| My father was a mechanic and crew chief working on F-14's
| during his time in the air force. His two takeaways from his
| service were: 1. No one should ever join the military for any
| reason ever forever, and 2. Somebody needs to color code
| literally anything.
|
| He talked about how the wiring schematics were a maze, made
| worse by using only non-labeled gray and black wires with
| connections and mounts that were the same color made of the
| same material.
|
| The exterior being gray makes sense - harder to see with human
| eyes. But internals? They should be massively contrasting
| colors for every single series of pieces to be removed so you
| can just follow along by color.
| saltcured wrote:
| Tangentially, this reminds me of stories from my dad who got
| some kind of special award for having made their ship radar
| the best in the fleet.
|
| Sometime before that, he got a lot of flak for having
| neglected one of the standing rules, to label everything as
| you take it apart and put it back "the way you found it". He
| decided to break it down and put it back the way the
| technical documentation said it should actually go. This
| seems to be part of the reason his radar performed better
| than the others after teardown maintenance.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Cheaper to buy huge spools of gray clad wiring than a lot of
| different color coded wires? Also you don't have to stock a
| lot of different colors for repairs.
| eggsome wrote:
| Surely you mean F-15 right? (F-14 was exclusive to the Navy +
| Iran exports)
| bityard wrote:
| I worked on military avionics in a previous life and all of
| the planes I worked on had miles of white wires. The reasons
| given to us were:
|
| 1. Cost savings when buying.
|
| 2. There are hundreds to thousands of wires in an aircraft,
| but there are NOT hundreds to thousands of different colors
| of wires (even if we allow for stripes, etc) that are readily
| distinguishable to an overworked airman hunched over in a
| dim, cramped avionics bay trying to fix a plane that needs to
| take off for a mission in an hour.
|
| If you are lucky, the wires are numbered. But even if they
| are, you typically identify a wire by its connector pin and
| PRAY that the fault isn't a break somewhere back in the
| wiring harness.
| torginus wrote:
| That color shows up a lot in stairways apartment blocks and
| school corridors and bathrooms in ex-Soviet bloc countries.
|
| My two guesses are that it was colored like that get the pilots
| feel like they were in a particular environment - a familar but
| not exactly private or comfortable one. It's a cultural thing
| like if you paint a bus yellow, Americans will think of a
| school bus, but most other people won't.
|
| My other guess is that they only made certain kinds of dye, and
| its very well possible the same factory made it that made it
| for bathroom tiles. In capitalism, if you don't have orange
| paint, for example, some company will just start making it if
| there's a demand.
|
| In communism, if nobody makes it, then it's not available,
| until and if some comittee decides that it should be made.
| gukov wrote:
| The reason for the green stairways was the vast surplus of
| the green paint (used for military equipment) post-WW2.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I've noticed that both American and Soviet planes used greenish
| colors, but the American ones are a yellowish green, while the
| Soviet ones are a bluish green. I've always wondered if the
| American yellowish green was chosen because it's similar to the
| color of the zinc chromate primer used on those aircraft, so
| the transparency of the paint wouldn't be an issue.
| zczc wrote:
| They definitely knew, Soviet books on industrial design and
| architecture explicitly mention Birren [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/search?q="birren"+zelenyi&udm=36&tbs=...
| (search for Russian for "Birren"+green in 20th century books)
| huflungdung wrote:
| Half arsed article. Expected much more detail
| dogscatstrees wrote:
| This article is a gem, thank you. Now off to Sherwin-Williams to
| see what the equivalent color names are. I wonder if there are
| matching formula.
| srmatto wrote:
| Would be cool to get an original copy of "Colors for Interiors:
| Historical and Modern by Faber Birren" and create color matches
| assuming it's not faded too much. I wonder if he created some
| kind of pigmentation ratio (or however paint coloring works)
| that he shared somewhere?
| mlacks wrote:
| On US submarines, _every_ bulkhead and beam not in the bilge is
| painted seafoam green. We were told it was the most soothing /
| anti-rage inducing color possible - necessary for long
| deployments in cramped quarters.
|
| After a little over a decade of service, no other color
| infuriates me more
| fgonzag wrote:
| Silver lining, at least your triggered by a color that
| basically doesn't exist and is no longer in wide spread use.
| (As in you won't find it as much in daily civilian life)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a fascinating story!
|
| I'd never even heard of this guy.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's so nice to see colors in any kind of government, industrial,
| or commercial building. The "everything must be gray/beige" fad
| has dominated institutional interior design for at least 30
| years. Maybe it's just nostalgia, I remember the wall colors in
| banks, schools, doctor's offices, mcdonalds, and so on in the
| 1970s and they seemed so wonderful. All these things got a coat
| of white paint sometime in the 2000s and look the same as
| everywhere else now.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I feel that too. My house had significant chunks painted a
| vivid aquamarine when I moved in 2018, and my now-ex insisted
| that we paint over it all in grey.
|
| After she moved out, I put up greens, yellows, brown, and blue
| all over the house. It's not quite as "public pool" feeling as
| that original aquamarine, but it's certainly more lively than
| grey/white. Funny enough though, when I had a designer come in
| to take measurements and do a mockup for a kitchen reno...
| everything was back to white because that's step one in making
| it look "modern" even though part of the pitch is custom
| cabinetry that _won 't_ just look like that same white IKEA
| stuff that everyone installs now.
| bobomonkey wrote:
| Install the boring shit and use colored vinal wrap for fun.
| Good resale value and you can enjoy life.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's common for homes especially when prepped for sale
| because neutral colors won't clash with whatever the
| potential buyer might want to bring in e.g. furniture,
| artwork, or other decor.
|
| Most of the rooms in my house are painted in colors and I
| mostly like it but it can sometimeds feel fatiguing. I've
| thought about repainting in a neutral gray or green.
| silisili wrote:
| I get that argument, but as a counterpoint of one: Our last
| house we got so tired of the drabness, we used rich reds,
| golds, greens, and an even a bright orange in one room. It
| made the whole house feel so much more vibrant, it's hard
| to explain but it was just... pleasant to look at.
|
| Anyways, the new owners tracked down my wife over some old
| mail, and during the conversation they thanked us for
| having painted it so vividly and said it was part of why
| they were drawn to it. They shared pics and they've done a
| -ton- of work, but the paint colors remain :)
| ghaff wrote:
| I had to get my whole house repainted after a kitchen fire.
| Have some black and a lot of white (trim and ceilings) but also
| subtle green in upstairs rooms and very subtle orange
| everywhere else. Kept it simple but prefer it to everything
| being a light gray like a relative has. There still aren't that
| many different paints if retouching is ever needed.
| jscheel wrote:
| I got through this entire article before I realized it was
| written by someone I worked with back in my agency days. Beth is
| an awesome designer with a great eye. Nice to see her on the
| front page here. Now, to the content: I often wonder how much we
| have lost with our endless quest for minimalism. We can't even
| make buttons look like buttons anymore. Affordances have become
| anemic at times. Designers who think and care deeply about
| functional color theory and usable design should be cherished.
| roughly wrote:
| I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the
| change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole
| lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns,
| driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes.
| There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer
| saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the
| research back in the day to figure out what color the street
| lights should be, that's why they were the color they were."
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| I think we've learned a couple of times that lighting
| placement, temperature, and shadow-casting are not ideal [0].
| Also some of the newer lighting does actually fade to a
| different color [1] so it's not just the base temperature of
| the new lights.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower
|
| [1] https://sigostreetlight.com/blogs/common-quality-
| problems-in...
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| I'm sure tons of people along the way "noticed" but if you're
| selling LEDs or you're paid by the LED people to create
| marketing to convince people that LEDs are gonna save the
| planet, you're not gonna bring that up.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| IDK if you've noticed but we are all lighting our house
| with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as
| incandescents did. I like the color spectrum of a real
| lightbulb better, too, but not enough to pay 10x in power.
| I make up for it by using all kinds of random bulbs all
| over the place so that the aggregate light in the room
| fills more of the spectrum than if I coordinated them all
| to be the same.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| How many life forms do we have to kill before cost
| savings aren't worth it?
|
| Besides, we can have LEDs in better spectrums for under
| 1/5th the costs of incandescents. We just hired stingy
| motherfuckers and don't care about the repercussions of
| our decisions.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| >but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use
| 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did.
|
| Yeah I know. I love it in my house.
|
| On the industrial side, sodium vs LED is a much closer
| comparison generally than LED vs incandescent. LEDs kinda
| suck for high bay applications.
| aliher1911 wrote:
| Did you try using high CRI LEDs with color remperature of
| 2700K-3000K? When I switched from halogen to LED I did
| just that and the difference is not noticeable, you'll
| have the same yellowish tint and very natural looking
| colours. Even with expensive bulbs, extra longevity
| covers for higher cost.
| SyzygyRhythm wrote:
| > that's why they were the color they were
|
| That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor
| lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen
| because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-
| pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially
| monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage,
| color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily
| (they used to be widely used in San Jose because Lick
| Observatory could filter out the 589 nm light).
| salawat wrote:
| ...And the old Engineer was just saying that that was the
| area on the spectrum they aimed for, so they found a light
| that emitted in that wavelength that could be technically
| implemented and scaled.
|
| Way better work than whoever it is handling this LED
| nonsense. Why we can't find a diode that we can use to
| simulate the old spectra would be a fun research project.
| nine_k wrote:
| We of course can make LEDs of more or less any color. The
| current white LEDs are high-power blue LEDs that are
| covered by various phosphors to give a mix of colors for
| "full spectrum" illumination. Different color
| temperatures are produced by different mixes of
| phosphors. This is pretty similar to how the traditional
| luminescent (mercury vapor-based) lamps worked.
|
| But different phosphors have different efficiency and
| price. LED lamps were first introduced for interior
| lighting, where sun-like spectrum is welcome. Such LEDs
| were produced en masse and relatively cheaply. So street
| lighting naturally used them, because municipalities
| usually look for the cheapest viable option.
|
| We likely could produce high-power narrow-spectrum orange
| LEDs if there was a large market for the economies of
| scale to kick in. You can buy deep orange LED lamps today
| (look for color temperature 1800K or 1600K, "amber"), but
| they are more expensive, because they are niche.
| scubadude wrote:
| Modern street lighting provides a way clearer view of the
| scene imo than the old sodium lighting. Maybe it's just
| brighter now.
| LtWorf wrote:
| It's about 100000x brighter and if your bedroom is next
| to a street lamp, good luck getting some sleep.
| mcfly_c-137 wrote:
| The monochromatic light emitted from sodium lamps is also
| close to the peak sensitivity of the human eye. Colours are
| not distinguishable, but contrast is much enhanced compared
| to "cooler" light sources.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| The posted article seems like credulous commentary, though.
| anthk wrote:
| I miss the aesthetics of the support for the street light
| themselves too. In Spain they used to be curved with a
| 'crown' shaped top, looking 'classical' and less hard for the
| brain as straight lines make the brain really tired. We are
| used to fractal and curved designs from nature, not to fake
| perspective points in every city full of straight lines.
|
| These could just reuse the current LED lamps by just
| redesigning the socket. Altough the materials should be
| changed as the old ones (I think they were ceramic and/or
| concrete?) could cause serious harms if they felt over random
| people walking around. And, yes, they can even break concrete
| pavement like nothing.
|
| I remember hearing a falling lamp+case near my home and upon
| falling to the sidewalk it sounded like a bomb, I am no
| kidding, even the floor vibrated and the windows nearly
| crashed. These things were really sturdy, either concrete or
| cement. I would love the same design but in magnesium, which
| can be lighter and maybe as durable, altough I know
| ceramic/concrete can withstand anything.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| This could do with a little better colour design, but let me
| just give you this to look at:
|
| https://gjcp.net/plugins/peacock/
|
| Yeah. Skeuomorphism isn't dead. Buttons need to look like
| buttons. Sliders need to look like sliders.
|
| You just know looking at it that when you click on the little
| buttons, they pop in slightly as the LEDs go on and off, right?
| Does it look cheesy and 80s and dated? Yeah it sounds cheesy
| and 80s and dated too.
| anonu wrote:
| Some of the old retired US aircraft carriers have their control
| rooms painted this color.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _He painted his bedroom walls red vermillion to test if it
| would make him go mad._
|
| _And?_ Did it?
| vintermann wrote:
| I suppose that's up to us to judge
| bluedino wrote:
| Have always been a fan of colors like that for my desktop
| background. Maybe because it's calming and I don't realize it?
|
| I'm not sure if it started with the teal from Windows 95's
| default color (hex codes vary based on Google searches), or if it
| was a purple-ish color from a classic Mac from school.
|
| To this day, my work Mac is teal and my personal is purple.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| #81D8D0 club, represent!
|
| Tiffany green is a Top10 /hn/topbar color _for a reason_.
| kleton wrote:
| Because chromium III oxide is a very light-fast pigment
| cmoski wrote:
| Old school SCADA screens that I first saw had a similar green
| background.
| carabiner wrote:
| Su-27 fighter cockpit is known for its turquoise paneling that
| supposedly is to promote calm.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah I was about to say similar pastel green colors crops up in
| a lot of Soviet control rooms too.
| karlgkk wrote:
| > We once went on a tour to spot bald eagles in West Tennessee,
| and upon arrival, a woman with fluffy hair in the state park
| bathroom told us she had seen 113 bald eagles the day before. We
| ended up seeing (counts on one hand)...2.
|
| As a semi professional eagle enjoyer, if the day before was trash
| day, then she might have been telling the truth. I'm not joking,
| they have bald eagle proofed dumpsters in Alaska.
|
| They're basically smart seagulls with talons.
| jaggederest wrote:
| We took a trip to Alaska via RV, and were parked at a roadside.
| I got up at 11:30pm at "night" (broad daylight) to use the
| restroom and was so annoyed by the seagulls I went outside to
| yell at them.
|
| It was eagles fighting over a salmon. They genuinely do sound
| and act exactly like seagulls.
| csours wrote:
| And here I assumed they sounded like red-tailed hawks!
| karlgkk wrote:
| I love watching them interact. I ended up ditching a show in
| Alaska to sit in a grocery parking lot and watched eagles
| quarrel for almost two hours. They're great.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| TL;DR: because mid-20th-century designers believed soft green
| reduced eye strain and improved focus.
|
| Basically the same nonsensical belief as in regard the dark mode
| nowadays.
|
| I don't even believe it's true. Green is just an army colour,
| that's pretty much it. Army uses army colours. Mystery solved.
| amelius wrote:
| It's the color of plants. A field of grass. Etc.
|
| Maybe it even works better with the color of a clear blue sky
| above it.
|
| Anyway, it's intuitive and not rocket science.
| Theodores wrote:
| As the son of a machine tools salesman, I call the article
| bullshit. Sometimes things just need to be painted and
| sometimes you just need that WW2 surplus paint to do the job,
| with the colour not mattering one bit.
|
| With anything, an academic can thread together a theory that
| neatly joins the dots to sound feasible, but my bet is that 99%
| of all engineers are stronger at physics than color theory.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Why do doctors wear green?
| mc2112 wrote:
| Green is the opposite color of red (blood) on the color wheel
| and it was supposed to reduce visual fatigue. I think green
| scrubs have fallen out of favor in many places, but that was
| one of the prevailing reasons.
| prewett wrote:
| I think the reason that I like dark mode is that I have had
| floaters in my eyes since at least age 14. They stand out
| against a bright white window background, but I don't notice
| them at all on a dark window with light text.
|
| Or maybe it's just because that's how IBM PC DOS, BASICA, etc.,
| as well as the VT100, VT220, VT300s that I used did it.
|
| (Also, I think displays should paint with light, and having a
| white background is painting darkness on a computer screen.
| It's particularly bad for presentation slides. A light
| background just screams "PowerPoint presentation".)
| Terr_ wrote:
| Seeing all those two-tone walls with green blow and cream above,
| I bet it isn't coincidental that those tones resemble plants
| under an overcast outdoor sky.
|
| Either because of unconscious choice, or because some designer
| theorized that people would be biologically primed to prefer it.
| Rantenki wrote:
| While I am sure there are stylistic reasons for using that color,
| there is another common reason why you see blue-green colors in
| paint, especially in older industrial environments: zinc
| chromate/phosphate corrosion protective coatings. Zinc chromate
| primer is the color you see on the interior surfaces of some
| aircraft, to inhibit corrosion. Zinc phosphate is more of a gray
| in most cases, although varying paint chemistries result in a
| spectrum between those two, with seafoam nearly smack in the
| middle.
|
| These are still available today, although the chromate version
| seems less popular for general use due to toxicity, especially (I
| assume) in the case of a fire.
|
| I have painted quite a few bits of sheet metal with a sea-foam-
| ish blue-green/gray paint back in the day (30 years or so ago). I
| don't recall the manufacturer, but it was a zinc conversion
| coating in nearly exactly that seafoam color, which has probably
| stolen at least a few years of my life expectancy. The same
| company sold other paints in a sickly mustard yellow, and close
| to fire-engine red, all with slightly different chemistries, I
| assume for different base metals.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I remember reading a long time ago about why barns / shipping
| containers are dark red. and IIRC it's simply because it's a
| very similar tone to iron oxide and thus the dye was cheapest
| to produce.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > There's a lot of U.S. history that's awful and indefensible
|
| Sure. But this is not one those things.
| whostolemyhat wrote:
| Did you read the next sentence?
| pbohun wrote:
| This makes me think of the color scheme of Plan9. I think they
| chose that color design for similar reasons.
| imglorp wrote:
| What's also interesting is the Russians adopted a similar color
| for aircraft cockpits, eg this MiG 31.
| https://cdn.jetphotos.com/full/2/75332_1265484412.jpg
|
| Meanwhile the Yanks stayed with mil-spec gray on a similar ship,
| the F-15:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:F-15_Eagle_Cockpit.jpg
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I remember when I first started out in a job that I should have a
| green poster nearby to look at to "relax your eyes" every now and
| then.
| bloak wrote:
| Also hospitals, though I think it's called "spinach-leaf green"
| then.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Why don't we do these things anymore? My office is all grey white
| desks.
| voxaai wrote:
| There's a cross-modal correspondence angle here that I don't see
| mentioned.
|
| The research on why certain colors feel calm points to the same
| perceptual substrate as why certain sounds feel calm. Low-chroma,
| mid-value colors (seafoam, sage, dusty blue) register as low-
| arousal across multiple measures, and that low-arousal quality
| maps predictably to other sensory modalities. The Bouba/Kiki
| effect is the famous example: rounded shapes feel like bouba,
| angular ones feel like kiki, cross-linguistically. But it extends
| to color -- rounded phonemes (/m/, /n/, /l/) tend to be rated
| more compatible with low-chroma colors than stop consonants.
|
| So the seafoam choice might be overdetermined: it works
| physiologically (low stimulation for long monitoring sessions)
| AND cognitively (low-arousal color category activates low-arousal
| associations across the board, keeping operators from
| overcorrecting on ambiguous signals).
|
| The independent Russian cockpit convergence is interesting
| evidence for this. If it were purely cultural you would expect
| more divergence.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| > Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is
| for conversation between humans.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| markdown wrote:
| LOL I just bought a can of Dulux Sea Foam and one of Dulux Sea
| Foam Quarter yesterday
| bronlund wrote:
| "Make a color theme for my terminal based on the Birren and
| DuPont master color safety code for the industrial plant
| industry."
| dopatraman wrote:
| the Burt Reynolds poster
| skyberrys wrote:
| It's a color of green reminiscent of Tiffany blue, I mean both
| colors have the intent of the original color but at the same time
| there is a well washed feel to them. It's both unnatural and
| expected for the function of these colors.
| microtherion wrote:
| I wonder whether that was the inspiration for the extensive use
| of green in the interiors of Severance.
| ktokarev wrote:
| good one, UX matters indeed
| abcde666777 wrote:
| Funny - one of those things you don't really wonder about until
| someone points it out, but which proves pretty interesting once
| you're aware of it.
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(page generated 2026-03-26 23:00 UTC)