An article in Slate has pointed out that many scenes in House of Cards look the same, with yellow in the background and blue in the foreground.
And it's true. If you watch the third series of House of Cards you see the yellow/blue effect again and again.
Igor Martinovic, the director of photography for House of Cards, told BuzzFeed News that the yellow/blue effect is a "natural occurrence".
"While it's true that the blue foreground and yellow background colours frequently co-exist in House of Card's scenes", he wrote in an email, "it is important to emphasize that their relationship is not an exclusive one. The lighting and use of colour in a movie or a TV show depends on many factors such as the time of day/night, position of actors and lights in space and relative to one another, set design, costumes...
The blue and yellow colour scheme is a natural occurrence caused by above mentioned elements rather than a "hidden code", however entertaining that thought may be. If one pays attention to the whole gamut of House of Cards, one can notice hundreds of shots where the faces in the foreground are warmer (yellow) and the background is colder (blue) or where the whole scene is of a more uniform tone."
So why is it happening? He claims it is the way the human eye perceives shadows and lighting sources.
"That being said, this observation does point to an interesting phenomena. The human eye tends to perceive shadows as cold and lighting sources as warm. In terms of colour, this translates into blue and yellow. With all things being equal, the white object in the shadow will appear bluish and the one in sunlight yellowish.
Even though the show is full of conspiracies, this is not one of them. I can assure you that there were no secret colour scheming meetings and even if there were, I would not be able to comment on them for obvious reasons."