—Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image courtesy Angela Haupt)My standard poodle, Story, is technically white. More often than not, he’s whatever he’s rolled in: grass stains down one flank, a smear of mud on his ankles, the dingy off-white of a dog who approaches the world with enthusiasm and very little discretion. So this spring, for the first time, I gave him a color he didn't earn by frolicking in the great outdoors: purple.Story’s groomer didn’t dye his whole body—just the puffy fur around his ankles, ears, and the tip of his tail, which fades from violet to a soft lavender like something out of a watercolor painting. And every time he gallops by, I beam. His pops of purple make me giddy with childlike glee.I'm not the only one reaching for more color—and there's a reason the pull might feel stronger than it used to. “The world is losing its color,” says Ben Williams, CEO of Color Factory, an immersive art experience in Chicago, Houston, and New York. Grayscale colors now account for more than 80% of cars on the road, up dramatically from three decades ago. The amount of color many of us encounter day to day keeps shrinking, Williams points out, largely because blandness is cheaper to produce and easier to sell. “Everything is becoming a shade of putty,” he says. Adding splashes of color to your everyday life comes with real benefits. “It's not a token thing—it actually has a meaningful impact on your well-being,” says Ingrid Fetell Lee, founder of the Aesthetics of Joy, a design and well-being platform, and author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness. One deliberate pop of color, she says, can shift how you feel in a space—your sense of safety, how settled your nervous system is, your mood across the day. The trick is knowing where to put it, why it works, and how easy it is to overdo.Here's how to add one intentional pop of color to your life, and actually feel the difference.Why your brain lights up at a splash of colorWhy does a purple poodle—or a hot-pink umbrella or lime-green phone case—make us feel so good? It turns out the answer goes back millions of years.“Our color vision evolved in part to help our primate ancestors find ripe fruit in the treetop canopy,” Fetell Lee says. Those ancient instincts are still running in the background. A bright burst of color tells your brain something good might be nearby. “It’s a sign of energy. It’s like a sign of life, and it taps into primal neurological circuits that are related to nourishment,” she says. We’re not consciously looking for food when we see a bright splash of color today, but those ancient circuits are still at work. “We evolved to find joy when we see bright color, because that means nourishment is coming,” she says. “When we put color in our environment, we’re effectively hacking into those ancient circuits and using that to feel more joy.”But not every color works the same way. Most people think about color only in terms of hue, Fetell Lee says—red, blue, green—but two other dimensions do a lot of the emotional work. “It has lightness, how light or dark it is, and it has intensity, how much pigment is in it,” she says. “Any hue can bring joy.” What matters is purity. “The colors associated with that upbeat, high-energy joy are the purest colors and the lightest colors,” she says. The grayer a shade, the more it mutes that signal: "When a color has a lot of gray, it starts to look muddy. It tends to be less joyful.”You don’t need to drench your life in color to reap the benefits. Even small, intentional bursts seem to be enough to wake up those ancient brain circuits. The easiest places to add colorStart with the objects that are already part of your routine. “You get more bang for your buck with things you're using every day,” Fetell Lee says. A kaleidoscopic coffee mug you sip out of every morning is likely to do more for your mood than the fancy rainbow wine glasses you only pull out on special occasions. The same goes for the places you pass through without thinking. Fetell Lee is especially fond of painting your front door a bold color because “it's the last thing you see when you leave in the morning” and “the first thing you see when you come home.” (She’s in the process of moving and plans to paint her new door blue.)From there, the possibilities are endless. Williams is evangelical about small, spontaneous splashes: a pair of bright earrings, a standout shoelace, something colorful clipped to your keys or earbud case. “Anything that you're regularly touching and interacting with,” he says, is a prime target. For example: “When was the last time you used a blue Sharpie instead of a black one?” Or take something as utilitarian as an umbrella. It’s worth springing for a cheerful one for the reaction alone: “You can get an umbrella for every shade there is in the rainbow, and it’s absolutely wonderful to open it up,” he says. “Everyone else's is navy or black, and yours has 18 colors on it, so everyone’s stopping and ‘wow’ing at your umbrella.”It’s also fun—and a little eye-opening—to browse makeup aisles. While Williams doesn't wear any himself, he thinks of the cosmetics counter as “an art gallery for inspiration.” Lipsticks, eye shadows, nail polishes: nowhere else are so many shades packed into such a small space. “The greatest painters in the world never dreamt of such an incredible palette of color as you can simply get down by your Macy's,” he says. “You can get a quick little color bath just wandering through a makeup aisle.” Williams seeks out what he describes as “complex colors,” or more nuanced hues. “I don't look for pink; I look for vinaceous cinnamon,” he says. “I don’t look for blue; I look for pale king's blue. I don't look for orange, but I see if I can find something that's dark citrine, and I put that on my backpack or bag.” Opt for ecru over white, he suggests, and start paying attention to all the shades in between.Does Williams have a favorite color? Not exactly. Instead, he picks a new one every year. Last year, it was seafoam green, and this year, it’s cinnamon buff. Picking an annual color, he says, gives him a reason to notice it everywhere he goes. There's no such thing as a wrong color There's a catch, though: Color isn't one-size-fits-all. The shade that lifts one person might not do anything for the next. “There's no such thing as a wrong color,” says color psychologist Karen Haller, author of The Little Book of Colour. “It's what's right for you.” Often, the colors we love are carrying memories we don't even realize are there. “When you see the color, it triggers the memory,” she says. People gravitate to turquoise because it returns them to the sea; the right hue can summon a holiday, a person, a feeling you can't quite place. So Haller's first instruction isn't to consult a color wheel. “You go within,” she says. “What is it that I really love?”Her own favorite is a case in point. “I love a marigold orange,” she says—a shade that, for her, “reminds me of joy, and reminds me to be playful.” In color psychology, orange is associated with childlike fun—which, she realized, was exactly what she needed more of. “My whole career is on color, and I can get quite bogged down in the detail, and sometimes I forget to have fun,” she says. “So when I have the orange around me, it reminds me to have fun.” But she doesn't drench herself in it. “I can't wear a lot of it,” she says, because her personality is “already quite Tigger, kind of bouncy. If I wear a lot of orange, it's like I'm bouncing off the ceiling.” A handbag, a pair of shoes, and no more: “I just need a little bit.”One mistake people make, Haller says, is assuming more color automatically means more joy. She reaches for a chocolate analogy. “I feel like a little square of chocolate, so I'll go and buy a whole family block,” she says. “And then I eat the whole family block because I wanted a little bit.” Color works the same way. Craving a lift, you might paint your whole living room sunny yellow. But instead of feeling happier, you end up overwhelmed—not because yellow is the wrong color, but because there's simply too much of it. The answer isn't to avoid bright colors; it’s to use them in the right dose. Her rule of thumb: “The stronger a color is, the more stimulating it is, and the softer the color is, the more soothing it is.” She likens it to a volume knob. “White is like turning the radio off,” she says, “and red is turning it up.” The brighter the hue, the less you need.As I listened to Haller, I realized I'd accidentally done exactly that with Story. The purple wasn't random. When he was a puppy and I went to choose which poodle to take home, two were left: one in a lime-green collar, and one in purple. The green-collared pup instantly squirmed away when I picked him up. The one in purple licked my face, and that was that. He's been my purple dog ever since.When Haller heard this story, she recognized the logic immediately. “The color is the trigger for the memory,” she told me. “Your dog licked your face—it was a happy memory. It's a positive trigger.” And it's a trigger for me, not for him: Dogs are largely colorblind to purple, so the lavender on his ankles does nothing for Story. “You're not doing it for the dog,” Haller says. “You're doing it for you.” Purple had become Story's color long before it ever ended up on his fur. And if he'd come home dyed from nose to tail, it would have been too much. The ankles, ears, and watercolor tail were all I needed.A little goes a long way—on a dog, and everywhere else. “We’re all colorful,” Haller says. “Even the most subtle of us.”