Color psychology is not just a matter of personal preference in your home decor. It’s a powerful tool that can significantly influence your and your staff’s productivity in the workplace. Many businesses choose their brand colors without considering their potential impact on the office environment. While these colors may look great on a business card, they might not be the best choice for your office walls. In this article, we’ll explore the psychological effects of common commercial paint colors and how to use them strategically to enhance your office space.
Blue
Blue is one of the most attractive colors for anyone despite traditionally being labeled as a color for just men and boys. Blue is a color that calms and soothes, promotes communication, and improves efficiency, all at the same time. There is a reason that it is the most popular color for large companies and businesses. Consider incorporating your brand colors into your office space as the base color if your brand colors include blue. This will help set the tone for how you want your office to function.
Red
Red is the second most popular color used in brands. Its color evokes strong emotions such as urgency, attention, and intensity. It is often used for seasonal sales (as it promotes urgency) and restaurants (as it also encourages appetites). How much of this color you use in your office space will depend on the type of business you are running. It will also depend on the amount of red present in your logo. If you only have a sliver of red in it, it makes little sense to use it as your base color. It might be better used in interview spaces or meeting rooms, where intensity, attention, and focus are required.
Grey
Grey is a great color that is very neutral to everything around it. While most popular brands include colors that pop, they almost always combine them with a shade of grey. Grey brings peace of mind and clarity into a space. It also provides a look of class and professionalism, which is a great impression to give when clients visit your office space. Since grey is such a neutral color, it is the perfect base color upon which your other brand colors can build. With grey as the base, you can add highlights of your other brand colors in your office space. This lets your office space look professional and creative at the same time.
Green
Green is a color that is growing in popularity for brands and logos. Once a color designated for just vegetables and money, it is now a symbol of sustainability and environmental safekeeping. There is a reason that companies as large as McDonald’s have replaced their traditional, red-themed restaurants with an earth-green as the base color in various locations worldwide. Green has a balancing and harmonizing effect. It provokes ideas of wealth, stability, nature, and renewal. If you have green as part of your brand, consider using it as a secondary color in your office space. This will give your employees and clients the feeling of wealth, stability, and renewal every time they walk into the office. These feelings are vital in a business, indicating they’ll be around for a long time.
Although these three commercial paint colors may seem basic, we can’t underestimate their psychological effect on people. If you have brand colors you aren’t using to your advantage in your office space, consider shaking things up! Not only will it positively affect creativity and productivity, but it will also reinforce your brand image to your employees and to whoever walks into your office. If you need help getting your project started, reach out to us! We do commercial painting and have color consultants ready to help transform your office space.
Members of the editorial and news staff of the Las Vegas Review-Journal were not involved in the creation of this content.