World’s Ugliest Color Found By Researchers: ‘Death’ Color To Deter Unhealthy Practices


Want to see something gross? Like, really disgusting? Something that has been described by people who have seen it as being reminiscent of “death,” “dirtiness,” and “tar?” Something so repugnant, so repellent, that scientists will use it to turn people away from even their most imbued habits, like smoking? All right, get a load of this:

World's ugliest color Australian government GfK Bluemoon
The horror. [Image via Christian Science Monitor]
Disclaimer: The slightly differing contrast and color accuracy of different computer screens makes it difficult to display the exact color. So if this does not make you gag in disgust, it’s your computer’s fault.

That’s right, research firm GfK Bluemoon has determined this color, Pantone 448 C, also called “opaque couché,” to officially be the ugliest color known to the world in a project commissioned by the Australian government.

Treehugger reports that the color is so odious that when the government found it and referred to it as olive green, the Australian Olive Association (which is apparently a thing) took issue, complaining that the comparison was unfair to olives of the world.

World's ugliest color Australian government GfK Bluemoon
[Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images]
Despite the fact that the researchers had to work constantly around dangerously ugly color swatches, Victoria Parr, a market researcher who helped find the world’s ugliest color, reflected that it had been a pleasant diversion from GfK Bluemoon’s usual MO of finding the most attractive colors for advertisements.

“It had as its aim the antithesis of what is our usual objective. We didn’t want to create attractive, aspirational packaging designed to win customers. Instead our role was to help our client reduce demand, with the ultimate aim to minimize use of the product.”

The products that the Australian government and, by association, GfK Bluemoon wanted to depopularize with the world’s ugliest color were cigarettes.

Tobacco companies were already saddled with the requirement of plastering their packages with government-selected images of the disgusting physical effects cigarette smoking can have on users, and the Australian government wanted to add the stipulation that the packaging had to be covered in the ugliest and most deterrent color possible to reduce smoking rates.

Adam Alter, associate professor of marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business and the author of Drunk Tank Pink, comments on the effect the world’s ugliest color has on potential cigarette buyers.

“A cigarette that comes from an ugly brown box will, similarly, seem less appealing for the same reason. We associate that brown color with so many negative substances and ideas that the cigarette comes to take on those negative associations as well. I certainly think it should be tried in America,” Alter explains.

The study was actually conducted in 2012 and that is when Australia implemented the change, but it has been working so well ever since that the ugliest color is now being adopted by some of the world’s countries with the most smoking-related health concerns.

“Australia has been using the same brown packaging for some time, and a review of two dozen studies showed that it deters smoking – and also seems to make the cigarettes taste worse, which was an unexpected side-effect of the repackaging,” Professor Alter wrote recently.

In fact, according to the Christian Science Monitor, the number of smokers in Australia dropped by 16.1 percent between 2012 and 2015.

Now nations like Ireland, France, and Britain are beginning to utilize the world’s ugliest color as well and hope for similar results.

Like most things, though, the ugliness — or beauty — of Pantone 448 C is in the eye of the beholder. Pantone rep Leatrice Eiseman told The Guardian that there is “no such thing as the ugliest colour.”

“At the Pantone Color Institute, we consider all colours equally.”

The same Guardian piece points out the world’s ugliest color can be found defying its title in some designer clothes, and Newbeauty notes it can actually be an awesome makeup on the right shade of skin.

As you can see, everything really is relative. But out of context, the world’s ugliest color really is vile. And it’s really making its mark on the health industry.

Is it possible we will see the world’s ugliest color put to more uses, like deterring people from buying products on which a store might make be able to claim a small profit margin, in the future?

[Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images]

Share this article: World’s Ugliest Color Found By Researchers: ‘Death’ Color To Deter Unhealthy Practices
More from Inquisitr