DECORATING : <i> Feng Shui </i> Followers Adjust Their Rooms to Living Colors

Why would black walls in a dining room be good for dieting? Why is green the best color for a child’s room? Why is bright red a bad choice for the kitchen?

For centuries, people have believed in the power of color.

Purple was the color of kings. Red carpets were rolled out for powerful people. Gold was associated with the imperial household and, therefore, good.

In some cultures, certain colors are thought to have specific healing or energizing properties, and why not? If a room painted a depressing shade can provoke, say, the symptoms of claustrophobia, could not the reverse be true?

Unfortunately, as anyone who has ever agonized over a fistful of paint chips can attest, picking just the right color can be a high-stress activity. Like nervous shoppers trying on clothing before a three-sided mirror, insecure customers dithering in a paint department might seek reassurance from anyone who happens to be walking by. But where to turn for more reliable inspiration?

Some have chosen their favorite shade of nail polish or tried to match the color of their poodles. Comedian Joan Rivers asked a paint specialist to duplicate the creamy beige of her favorite stockings for the walls of her drawing room--and she wasn’t kidding.

Others turn to color gurus, image consultants who map out personal color charts and totally coordinate wardrobes and walls. Today, a small, brave new world of consumers as well as professional designers is reaching for a more spiritual approach.

“Color choices are influenced by your ethnic background, your education and your exposure,” said Kenneth X. Charbonneau, director of color marketing for major paint manufacturer Benjamin Moore & Co. “I would like to believe that in the year 2000, we will be discovering things that we never knew about the power of color, that there is a level of color that we have not truly broken into yet.”

Cosmic color anyone? In a decade in which Birkenstocks and acupuncture have gone mainstream, and alternative medicine and holistic lifestyles are attracting more followers, there is interest in a more mystical view of color.

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One approach is feng shui, the ancient Oriental art of placement, whose goal is living in harmony with one’s surroundings. Part of the essence of feng shui is a reliance on color to create the right mood, the right physical response. Among its principles:

* Painting dining-room walls black can make eating less pleasurable and appetizing--good for those trying to lose weight.

* Children tend to thrive in green bedrooms because green conveys vitality, a sense of growth and makes them blossom with a sense of new possibilities.

* Don’t paint a kitchen bright red or the cook will always be in a hot-tempered, sweaty mood.

Feng shui (pronounced “fung shway”), which in Chinese means wind and water, is based on a centuries-old belief that rooms, furniture and other surroundings should be arranged in harmony with nature to ensure health, wealth and happiness.

The philosophy has roots in Buddhism and rural folk custom. Although most design fusses with the look of a place, the approach dwells in its spirit. Some Westerners have likened this inexact science to acupuncture for the home.

The relationship between spirit and color is the topic of a new book, “Living Color: Master Lin Yun’s Guide to Feng Shui and the Art of Color,” by Sarah Rossbach and Lin Yun, being published next week by Kodansha America.

Rossbach, a journalist who became a feng-shui consultant, and Lin, who met her in Hong Kong in 1977 while serving as her Chinese teacher and feng-shui mentor, have tried to distill specific color theory from the mysterious swirl of Oriental myth and folk legend that is feng shui. The result is a guide to color in your home, your food, your clothes and your garden, with a little bit of fortune telling thrown in for good measure.

“From the time we are very small when we wake up and open our eyes when we are born, the first thing we see is color,” said Lin, a Beijing-born scholar now living in Berkeley. “Color is a deep and very important aspect of life.”