Anuj Saxena
Colours rule our life, our work and all things around us. It’s amazing how the role of colours inside our offices and their impact on our productivity is understated when we design our offices.
We spend more than 50% of our awake time every week in offices. It is quite obvious that our office environment is going to have an impact on our mood.
Specifically, the colour scheme in our workplace has a significant influence on how we feel and connect ourselves with our office space and affects our productivity.
A study by the University of Texas found that office workers, especially women, felt motivated while working in offices that were predominantly blue and green. Red and orange workspaces, on the other hand, induced similar feelings in men.
It is also quite interesting to note that the influence of colour varies depending on the nature of the job. For example, the colour red is associated with passion and energy in most professional setups. If a job involves a lot of physical activity, red can act as a positive mood enhancer.
According to a survey by www.ccsenet.org, around 68.2% of respondents agreed that colour scheme in a professional setup has a close relation with employee productivity. In the same survey, 40% of people voted in favour of blue as their favourite colour. 15% of respondents voted for red and black, followed by green and white which got the vote of 10% of respondents who took this survey. The colour blue is known as a stress buster which is a major reason behind such overwhelming popularity.
It was also observed that professionals, who spend a good part of their day in front of the computer screen viewing bright colours, prefer soothing colours in their background.
Jobs requiring a lot of concentration should be performed in rooms with a lighter colour scheme while high energy jobs like journalism are best performed in an environment with a darker background.
Let’s take a brief look at how certain colours affect mood and productivity.
Red: High energy colour associated with passion, emotion and assertiveness. It makes a person feel quite confident. It can have a very adverse effect in stressful situations.
Blue: It is one of the most dominating colours in the palette of nature and exudes a sense of peacefulness, serenity and calm. It helps employees to concentrate and helps to open up and use innovative methods to solve a problem.
Yellow: It is a colour for optimism, emotional strength, creativity and self-esteem. A vibrant shade of yellow can offer an energy boost to employees. However, using the wrong shade can lead to depression and irrationality.
Green: Green is a popular choice among interior decorators to create a sense of harmony, balance and rest. It is ideal for stressful environments where a balance between the head and the heart is highly sought after.
White: The colour white is considered the ultimate embodiment of perfect professional colour. It is used by designers to give a cheerful feeling to cramped office areas. It matches well with all other colours and also helps to make a room look bigger, brighter and cleaner.
We at Skootr, understand the effects of colour on people’s attitude, productivity and hence overall business, therefore the colour scheme plays a vital role in the workplaces we design.
