When you’re making interior design choices for your office, you may think about how to incorporate natural light, whether you want to have an open office floor plan, where you’ll put meeting rooms, and what type of furniture will best serve workers.

When you’re making interior design choices for your office, you may think about how to incorporate natural light, whether you want to have an open office floor plan, where you’ll put meeting rooms, and what type of furniture will best serve workers. One detail that often gets lost in the shuffle — and one that’s extremely important for employees’ moods and productivity — is the color scheme in your office.

Color accents in an office can have a profound effect on workers. Not only can the right colors boost productivity in the workplace, but they can even potentially offer health benefits. If you want to ensure employees are satisfied and empowered to deliver their best work, then you need to put plenty of thought into the colors people see in your office.

In this article, we’ll explain three benefits of incorporating color into your office, whether you’re painting the walls, investing in new furniture, retiling your floors, or adding artwork into the space.

Benefit #1: You’ll Inspire Creativity

Certain colors, like purple, blue, green, and orange, tend to make people feel more creative. This knowledge comes from ancient traditions like feng shui, and it’s been supported by more recent scientific studies.

Feng shui in particular places emphasis on purple as a color that promotes creative thinking. You can use shades of indigo, violet, or purple; or, if you want a calmer vibe, you can try a lighter shade of purple, like lavender.

Along with purple, the color green tends to spark innovation and inventiveness. However, bright green shades are often overpowering, so consider using green hues that are more muted and calming.

The color blue can help people focus on creative tasks, while orange tends to make workers feel more enthusiastic and inspired.

Benefit #2: Workers Will Feel More Relaxed

You can use color to not only stimulate but to soothe as well. Hues like green, blue, and violet have calming effects that tend to set people at ease. In particular, the tendency for blue to create calm is so well-established that governments and civil engineers have tried to leverage the power of blue for social effects.

As an example, in 2000, the city of Glasgow in Scotland installed blue streetlights in specific neighborhoods to try and reduce crime. Police departments subsequently reported that the program succeeded, and crime rates fell in those neighborhoods.

RELATED: Why Zen Matters in Your (Home) Office

Benefit #3: Color Can Fight Depression

In 2007, a University of Texas study confirmed what any good interior designer already knows: offices painted in bland colors like gray, beige, and white tend to create feelings of sadness in workers, especially women. Creative color choices are the antidote to walls of earth tones and grays.

Interestingly, men in the study also experienced negative thoughts and emotions when surrounded by orange and purple, so you may have to weigh this finding against the fact that those colors tend to promote creativity.

Applying Different Colors for Different Results

Color psychology is the study of how different shades and hues of color affect human mood and behavior. Researchers believe that the wavelengths of different colors affect our responses to them.

In general, colors with long wavelengths, like red and yellow, tend to stimulate and provoke thought; colors with shorter wavelengths, like blue and violet, tend to relax and calm.

You can use this information when choosing colors for your office. On a typical color spectrum chart that goes from red on the left to violet on the right, the colors are organized by wavelengths. Colors to the left have longer wavelengths, and colors to the right have shorter wavelengths.

So, consider the space you’re designing and what it’s trying to accomplish, then select colors to match that mission. For example, when designing a collaborative meeting room, you may want to select long-wavelength colors (red, yellow) from the left of the chart to stimulate discussion and creative thought. Meanwhile, for a break room or quiet work area, you may want to emphasize colors more toward the right of the chart (green, blue, violet) to create calming and relaxing vibes.

Add Color to Your Office With ZGO Solutions

Colorful Components from ZGO Solutions make it easy to add that much-needed dose of color to your workspace. Using our patented Smart System components, we created unique and innovative ways to integrate colorful components into our tables. Our end pipe and feet trim allow you to add a seamless pop of color into your table, available in distinctive colors like sky blue, jade, burnt orange, ruby, blue lagoon, canary gold, and red coral. We can even create custom components in your company’s brand colors. With no mechanical attachment required, if you change your mind, just swap out the color for a whole new color scheme.

And we don’t stop there — our privacy screens contain up to 17 standard color options, with custom colors available upon request. In times when the need for privacy and screen barriers is at an all-time high, use them in a way that brings color and design choice to your workplace.

In addition to our color options, our desks are fully height adjustable and designed with both ergonomics and sustainability in mind. We also offer innovative and customizable solutions for cable management, stability, and quick connections — everything you need to create the perfect workspace.

Ready to get started with your ergonomic and productivity-boosting desk solutions? Contact us today to learn more.

References

Office Color Psychology: The Ultimate Guide. (n.d.). Ergonomic Trends. Retrieved from http://ergonomictrends.com/office-color-psychology-ultimate-guide/

Shandrow, K. L. (2015, March 9). How the Color of Your Office Impacts Productivity. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243749