Dreaming about yellow
Yellow is reported rarely and, when it is, usually because something was the wrong shade of it: jaundiced, sickly or artificial. The reports are notably more negative than the traditions would predict.
Also searched as: the colour yellow, yellow in a dream, yellow light
Where yellow appears it is frequently qualified. Dreamers say sickly yellow, dirty yellow, or old yellow rather than simply yellow.
Artificial light accounts for a share of reports, and those describe an interior lit badly rather than a colour.
Yellow on skin is a small group and produces alarm, usually connected to illness.
Bright, clean yellow does appear, usually attached to sun or flowers, and those reports are ordinary and warm.
Common associations
- Qualification, since the colour is rarely reported unmodified.
- Illness, in the skin reports.
- Bad artificial light.
- Sun and warmth, in the smaller positive group.
Positive readings
The sun and flower reports are pleasant and unremarkable, which is worth writing down because they are the ones dreamers do not think to log.
Difficult readings
The sickly version is the more reported and produces unease rather than fear.
Where yellow is on a person, the reports connect to health worry, and the doctor entry is more relevant than this one.
Psychological perspectives
This entry is a small demonstration that reports and traditions can diverge. Yellow carries positive associations in a number of cultures and is reported negatively more often than not, which suggests the reports are not being driven by the symbolism.
That is worth knowing generally: where the reports and the tradition disagree, the tradition is the thing that was written down, not the thing that was observed.
Cultural and historical
Yellow is a colour of high status in imperial Chinese tradition, reserved in some periods, which is close to the opposite of the modern Western association with cowardice and caution.
Saffron and yellow robes carry specific religious significance in Buddhist and Hindu traditions.
The Western associations with caution and with cowardice are recent and idiomatic.
What the sleep science says
Observed: dream reports of yellow skew negative despite largely positive traditions, which argues against symbolism driving reports.
Not established: any meaning for yellow.
Your own context
- What shade was it, and did you qualify it?
- Was it light or a surface?
- Was anything yellow that should not have been?
- What does yellow carry where you grew up?
If this recurs
Rarely worth keeping a note of on its own. Where yellow attaches to a person or to illness, log the health context instead.
Emotions often reported
- unease
- revulsion
- calm
- confusion
- detachment
- alarm
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Did I qualify the colour when I described it?
- Was it light or a thing?
- Was it on a person?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
3 references. What these labels mean
- 1.The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development and Content AnalysisAcademic book
G. William Domhoff (2003) · American Psychological Association
Cited for: The continuity hypothesis (that dream content largely reflects waking concerns) and a sustained critique of symbolic dream interpretation as an evidential method.
- 2.The Content Analysis of DreamsAcademic book
Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle (1966) · Appleton-Century-Crofts
Cited for: The standard coding system for dream content, and the normative frequencies that later studies are compared against. The reason claims like "aggression is more common in dreams than friendliness" can be stated numerically at all.
- 3.Gender Differences in Dream Recall: A Meta-AnalysisPeer-reviewed research
Michael Schredl and Iris Reinhard (2008) · Journal of Sleep Research
Cited for: Dream-recall frequency as a measurable, individually stable trait, and the factors that move it.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of yellow have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- SymbolDarknessDarkness in dreams is not the absence of an image. Dreamers describe an active inability to see, frequently with light sources that do not work, and that failure is one of the most reliable features of dream perception.
- PersonDoctorDoctors appear in dreams mostly around waiting and around being told something. The reports are dominated by an appointment that does not happen and by a diagnosis the dreamer cannot afterwards recall.
- ColourColour in dreamsMost people report dreaming in colour, and most dream reports never mention it. Both are true, and the gap between them is why a colour you remember clearly is worth a line in the journal and a colour you had to think about probably is not.
- ColourBlackBlack in dream reports is usually an absence rather than a colour: a figure with no detail, water with no visible bottom, a room with no light. What dreamers are describing is most often the failure to resolve something.
- ColourBlueBlue is rarely reported as a colour in its own right. It arrives attached to sky and water, which have their own entries, and dreamers almost never mention it unless something was blue that should not have been.
- ColourBrownThe least reported colour in dream content, and the entry exists to say so. Brown is everywhere in the world and almost never mentioned, which is the attention finding at its most extreme.