Have any of you noticed that the colour of a bike can really influence how you ride?
I have a red bike, used to have two, and noticed that I ride/rode those two way harder than my blue or green bikes. Yellow bike somewhere in between.
I even noticed it so much that when I resprayed my road bike which I use for long distance riding, I intentionally chose a deep blue for a more relaxed, calm mindset to help me not burn up my energy at the start of a ride.
Anyone done experiments with the same frame in different colours to see if it really makes you feel different and ride differently?
I don’t know for sure if the colour does that much or if it just happens to be bikes with geometry that encourage hard riding which also happen to be red. I did have at least one blue/white bike that really encouraged going as hard as possible.
This has been studied quite a bit. In competition between teams or individuals red has a small but statistically significant advantage over blue (and one would presume, over other colors).
Coral Snake - My first custom build. Started out as a 2004 black Trek 4300. After reading online about trying to jam a 1x12 drive-train onto an old MTB frame, I expected to end up with a noisy, glitchy-shifting bike. After dialing in the derailleur adjustments, this is the smoothest shifting bike I have ever ridden. This bike replaced my go to MTB immediately and I ride it constantly.
response to colour ( or even finish more generally ) can definitely be a pretty big influence on how people feel about any object, and id agree bikes are part of that for sure.
I’d like to think (anecdotally at least,) that we kind-of know that while there are some observable trends (eg red v blue above), this is also plausibly SUPER personal right?
im an ew-yuck-red-bike guy; but feel I have a strong response that green bikes are for steady haulin, and pink is for sending it.
