Five elements (Pancha Tatva) : (Water, Air, Fire, Earth and Space).
How these elements are related to each other:
Water Element create Air/Plant so its Parent element for Air.
Air (Wood) Element Create Fire so its Parent element for Fire.
Fire Element Create Earth so its Parent element for Earth.
Earth Element create Metal/Space so its Parent element for Space.
Space Element Create water so its Parent Element for Water.
So that is said
Space (Gray/White Color) is Parent Element for Water (Black/Blue Color) and Child Element for Earth (Yellow Color)
Water (Blue/Black color) is Parent Element for Air (Green/Brown Color) and Child Element for Space (Gray/White Color)
Parent element enhances the zone and Child element exhausts the zone.
North being Water Element, if you put white or gray color in North, it will Enhance.
If you put Green or Brown Color in North, it will exhaust the zone.
When to enhance and when to exhaust to balance the zone depends upon area square footage of that zone when compared to total square footage of entire living space on that floor.
With this theory North zone's self color are Blue/Black and Acceptable Colors are Gray/White or Green/Brown. Depending on zonal strength it will have its own effect but to keep things simple these are the acceptable colors if used in moderate amount.
Now lets talk about Anti colors/element.
For water element other than Parent and Child two elements left which are Fire and Earth.
How Presence of Anti Colors affect North zone of Water Element:
Water will put fire off and fire would insult Water so its Anti Color to Water Element.
Water will unstable Earth and Earth will block Water so its Anti color to Water Element.
With this Red or any color in the red family like Orange or Purple etc are anti color in North (Water) zone and similarly Yellow is also an Anti Color in North Zone.
So if we talk with respect to zonal Significance of North then its a zone of Money and Opportunities (Growth). If we have Yellow in the form of color, metal or activity in the North then it will block the Money creating Opportunities. And similarly if we have Fire in the form of color, metal or fire itself in the North Zone if will hamper the Career and Growth and also disturb the attributes related to fire element in its own zone.
With above logic following are the Acceptable and Anti colors for individual Zones.
Presence of anti color in major amount and sometimes even in small amount can create the imbalance in particular zone. So instead of trying to fix the colors in each and every zone only concentrate on your issues which might be related to individual zone and then correct the imbalances in that zone accordingly.