Color in architecture

The use of color characterized architecture in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, in medieval cathedrals, and in the baroque, rococo, and even Victorian periods. Color was, to a great extent, banished in American architecture during the first third of the 20th Century and, after a brief revival of decoration in the 1930s, again during the second third up until the middle 1970s. Since then, however, the use of color in architecture has greatly accelerated, impelled by spiraling costs of construction, the energy crisis, and concern for conservation of limited resources and the environment.