How colour in the workplace can affect the bottom line

What colour is your workplace? What colours are you wearing today? And could colour affect the bottom line?

Colour should be an issue in the workplace and increasingly it is, says Ms Helen Graham, psychology lecturer and author of Healing with Colour (Gill & Macmillan, £5.20). "There is sufficient evidence to suggest that colour impacts on concentration, energy levels, motivation and well-being," she told The Irish Times.

US studies have shown that mullerbakker - bubblegum pink - will sap muscle tone and energy, and so some prisons have been painted that colour, she says.

"It's almost impossible to be aggressive in that environment."

A British museum and art gallery recently received a grant to convert a storeroom into a multi-purpose space for teaching, leisure and displays.

"They recognised that colour was critical to this room. I'd been asked to consult on the layout of the room. They wanted the room to be non-threatening, but they didn't want it to send people to sleep during lectures. It also had to enable people to be creative. We came up with a colour scheme that was a pale blue with a peach colour, a subtle combination of yellow-orange," says Ms Graham.

The director reported that the room worked very well and transformed the whole area.

"Whereas they had been to another new purpose-built facility and he said they'd got their colour scheme completely wrong. And the rooms there - people just didn't want to be in them. And they certainly didn't want to work in them," Ms Graham explains.

Yellow can be good to stimulate energy and intellect in an office, she says, unless it's already an overstressed workplace, in which case yellow will overstimulate people making them feel more stressed. "Equally, in an educational context, yellow is a good colour for stimulating children's learning. But if there are hyperactive children it can overstimulate them."

She believes that wearing something yellow can help you think better at work or doing an exam. Wearing something yellow "can help you to work optimally".

Red helps people to work vigorously. Indian restaurants are often coloured red. The colour red can generate a greater throughput of people and speed up staff. She says: "If you want people to work vigorously, red is it."

If workers are spending too much time chatting in the lavatory, "paint it bright orange. People won't want to hang about in there".

Red and orange promotes physical activity, while yellow is good for mental activity. "If you really want to give people a blast of energy, use yellow and red together - Noddy colours. But be careful: if you try it with an over-stressed workplace it can overdo it."

Green is a relaxing, calming colour. Green is for health. It's a good colour for health centres or offices where you want a calming, reassuring environment.

Blue has a cooling effect. "If you wanted to cool people down in changing rooms or swimming baths, blue is good."

Black is a good colour for business. It absorbs all other colours and is quite a social outfit.

But brown is not a good colour to wear. Associated with stagnant energy, brown can be depressing and can make people fade into the background.

Grey, too, can be depressing. Its strength is its neutrality but it can depress the wearer and the people they're interacting with, she says.

Yellow, orange and red are often used by companies producing gym equipment because these are the colours to stimulate physical activity. Blue and turquoise are good for communication and people whose business is communication.

Colours affect the bottom line because wrong colours can give the wrong impression. For instance, a company selling heat lamps but using pale blue in their logo would send out the opposite message. "If the message is you are dynamic, but you use drab colours, you shoot yourself from the start," she says.

Ms Thilde Devlin, a Dublin-based colour therapist, says that the colours in the workplace can contribute to bringing out the best in people, whether on the walls, the seating or the flooring. Blue is the colour of communication. If it's important for people at work to say what they want to say, then blue is it.

Blue helps you to "speak the words you want to speak", she says.

Green is good for decision-making. It's also "a great colour for space and freedom". Royal blue "opens you up spiritually", while violet can help people let go of sadness. - Thilde Devlin can be contacted by phoning 018213205

jmarms@irish-times.ie