Which Colours work best when working from home?

The first question that you probably have about spaces for work is what colour you should paint their walls.  Science has answers to those questions.

The colours that are best for surfaces, walls and otherwise, in areas where you’ll be doing mental work are not very saturated and relatively bright or light – this sort of colour is a dusty blue or a sage green with lots of white mixed into it.  A space for physical work, for packing laundry into a washing machine as quickly and efficiently as possible, should feature colours that are saturated and darker, think sapphire blue or Kelly green.  People in spaces featuring cooler colours feel more powerful than humans in warmer coloured ones—choose wall colours, etc., accordingly.

Looking at red gives us a burst of strength, over and over again.  So it’s a good shade to look at while you’re lifting weights, but ears you down if you look at it while doing some sort of continuous work, like riding an exercise bike.

Even more important than red’s effect on our physical performance is what it does inside our brains when we’re doing brain work.  In a word, looking at red while we do a mental task is terrible.  Seeing red degrades our analytical performance even if we look at it for a very brief period of time, so in the words of an old, old commercial, your best bet in an office is to “Get the red out.”

Colours are rarely used alone.  Combos best for knowledge work are close to each other on the colour wheel—blues and greens, for example—while colours across from each other—blues and yellows, for instance—are best for spaces where physical work is planned.

When colours are used together they inevitably form some sort of pattern.  Ones that will put you in the best sort of mood for brain work feature lots of curving lines.  To signal efficient action to your mind, use geometric options packed with straight lines that form rectangles, squares, triangles, pentagons, hexagons, any sort of straight edged options you can think of.

Also, whenever you can use wood with visible grain in your mental workplace (there is a limit, it’s about 45% of the surfaces around you).  Wood with visible grain helps make sure that you’re stress levels stay at manageable, productive levels.