We have all heard about how colour affects our mood, it’s one of those well known facts that we believe in.
We know that colours effect how we feel because we are our own case studies. We have favourite colours, colours that we can’t stand and colours that make us feel happy or sad.
So, it stands to reason that if we painted our serviced office spaces or commercial properties different colours it would effect our moods and in turn, our productivity and output.
So, with no thought to research I reckon that, red provokes feelings of anger and aggression, blue and green would be tranquillity and relaxation and white would be order. Using this logic, we would paint the dressing room of our rugby team red, a doctor’s reception green & blue and a laboratory, white.
Let’s take a look at research that has been carried out on this subject, by NASA of all people. Over the last 15 years, in a series of experiments, a body of work has been developed from a number of studies in closed office spaces to determine the possible effects of colour on worker well-being, productivity, performance, and satisfaction.
Several phases involved workers performing various office tasks (e.g typing, proofreading, answering the telephone and filing) and then methodically testing the effects of various office colours and colour schemes on the workers.
3 identical offices were chosen and they were painted red, white and pastel green & blue. The office workers were then set a number of identical tasks to carry out in each separate room. The purpose was to determine the effects of these three colour schemes in regards to mood, speed in performance of clerical tasks and accuracy in clerical tasks administered to office workers. The effects of the colour schemes were examined for 90 workers.
In examining the effects of the three different colour schemes, the results suggest that colour scheme alone may not have a discernible impact on productivity. By themselves, the three different colour schemes did not impact productivity differently. Only when individual differences in the ability to screen irrelevant environmental stimuli were taken into account did the colour schemes exhibit a differential impact on productivity.
In other words, it made no difference what colour the office was painted. There you go; if you read this I have just saved you the cost of a tin of paint.
