The stage directions for Act 1 Scene 2 are “A room painted pink...”, which suggests love, happiness, and tranquillity as pink is an inviting and disarming colour. The calm family scene is, however, contrasted by the lullaby that the Mother-in-law and Wife recites for the baby (which is assumed to be Leonardo's); the bloodied horse, which is assumed to have been stabbed in the leg, “Horsey's hooves are red with blood/...A silver dagger broken.”, is symbolic of blood that will be shed. Assumed to be Leonardo's horse, it is possibly referring to his blood on the horse as he is hunted down in the later scenes of the play. The horse itself, in the lullaby, refused to drink the water as it is “so black” and menacing and as such appears to be trying to avoid confrontation or death (black being typically associated with death, particularly in the context of the time period) yet the horse will ultimately be left without a rider, and the child without a father (the lullaby itself suggests the violence and pain of life, which the child is too innocent to understand yet).
The pink room also is a reference to bloodshed in the future, to a certain extent: although it is faded by uncertainty (before the deaths at the end, the characters each could have made choices to change the final outcome), it represents both the passion that the two families hold and also the blood that will be spilt. Similarly, in Act 1 Scene 3, the room is filled with pink and white. The pink is representative of Leonardo's passion and the white is representative of the Bride's purity (although the audience may doubt her virginity, she reveals in the final scene that she is still “as pure as a new born child”, which would have been an important issue at the time).
Throughout the play, the Mother is often seen dressed in black; as was customary of the time period, women would 'belong' to their husbands for their entire life. So, if she becomes a widow, she would wear dark colours (often black attire) to represent her mourning. However, in Act 1 Scene 3, the Bridge wears a black wedding dress; this is rather unusual and it would have alerted the audience. The fact that she wears a black dress symbolises her suppressed passion for Leonardo, who is a former lover, which is clearly demonstrated still exists when she runs off with him towards the end of the scene. It does, on the other hand, foreshadowing her becoming a future widow since her Bridegroom and Leonardo both die at the end of the play. The audience, though, would most likely only have suspected the Bridegroom's death and the dramatic scene whereby the two lovers run off together would definitely have been a shocking turn of events. Furthermore, Act 2 Scene 1 is hot and the darkness is emphasised, which suggests an inescapable (and suffocating) aspect of the Bride's yearning to be with Leonardo as her marriage to the Bridegroom approaches. In this position, the Bride would likely to panic and considering Leonardo's presence, it's understandable as to why the two ran off together (although it would have been condemned at the time).
Act 3 Scene 2, the final scene, is a scene with “no perspective” (as specified in the stage directions); it's simple and timeless, but it is bleached and devoid of all colour. Clinical in nature and without any emotion, resembles the cleanliness of a morgue or the purity of heaven, both related to death and specifically, the deaths of the Bridegroom and Leonardo. The scene seems to refer to fate and how the characters, despite their best efforts, have no control over their own destiny; the fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos as they unwind the threads of life are represented by the two girls and the little girl each with their red wool, which could imply the spilt blood of the men or refer to the network of veins mentioned by the Bride earlier in the play.
Lorca uses a vast range of different colours, each to different effect, in 'Blood Wedding'; to conclude, I would say that it an extremely effective way of engaging an audience watching the play and it allows them to develop their own ideas about the futures of the characters throughout the play – which makes it especially effective at foreshadowing the events to come. Although it takes a predominantly 'back-seat role' I feel that it works very well and a director producing the play wouldn't have many options available in changing the way that colours are presented, which allows Lorca's intended use for it to permeate through any production, whereas other aspects of the play are subject to change based on the director's vision.
