How Colors May Affect Your Productivity and Success

by Ann on June 15th, 2009

Color and productivity Colors are everywhere and their impact on us shouldn’t be under-estimated. Our nervous system requires input and stimulation. And color choice is the best way to help it.

Colors can change our mood, make us work or feel tired – imagine, your room colors may be the reason for your bad productivity or lower creativity! The human eye sees about 7,000,000 colors.

Certain colors and color relationships can irritate, cause headaches, or make you feel sick. Other colors and color combinations are healing and soothing.

Consequently, the appropriate use of color can maximize productivity, minimize visual fatigue, and relax the whole body. Here are some basics to start from:

	Color	Physical background	Feelings	Effect on productivity
Thermal / warm colors (stimulate and raise blood pressure)	Red	Red raises blood pressure, increases breathing, heart rate and central nervous system functioning	Makes people feel hungry; subconsciously symbolizes dominance	Makes people more cautious and detail-oriented; => Make people’s work more accurate
Cool colors (calm, ease inflammation, and lower blood pressure)	Blue	Blue lowers blood pressure, the pulse rate and body temperature	Least appetizing; calming	Boosts creativity
	Green	Green in the center of the spectrum has a stabilizing effect on the human system as a whole.	Relieves stress, makes you calmer	Researchers have also found that green can improve reading ability

Now, just a few details to support the data listed in the table:

Red:

color red

It may look weird that while making you more energetic and excited, this color also makes you more productive and attentive to details. This phenomenon is explained the following way:

“When you feel that the situation you are in is problematic,” said Norbert Schwarz, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, “you are more likely to pay attention to detail, which helps you with processing tasks but interferes with creative types of things.”

Blue:

color blue

By contrast, when people are calm, balanced and in a happy mood, they are more creative and less analytic. Hence if you need to get more creative, blue is the right choice for you. Blue also suppresses appetite, so if you have bad time concentrating because of the frequent breaks for some snacks, surround yourself with blue and you will get more organized.

Compare:

Want to see for yourself, compare then: Which one looks more delicious?

How delicious does this look to you?

and

Red

Which one makes you more relaxed / energetic?

Blue

and

red

Post images by janerc, FlickrJunkie, ruurmo , colormatters, flod, B G

More on colors: How Color Choices in Stores Can Influence Your Shopping Decisions

Tags: colors, Featured, Productivity

Reader Comments

(add yours)

SJS
June 15th

The title seems to have used “effect” where “affect” would be more in line with the content of the article.
ael
June 23rd

nice try correcting grammar, but “effect” is indeed the correct use here.
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July 6th

[...] it’s been long thought that colors can affect our mood and productivity, what about scents? Can filling a room with a specific scent help you focus or work more [...]
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July 11th

[...] DRJournal Share and Enjoy: [...]
Leon
August 10th

To really prove the point that color affects how appetizing something is, you should really have two identical photos of a food but shown in different colors.
Here there are other factors other than just color that make the rice appear less appetizing than the strawberries: the uninspired composition of the image, the seaweed skin, and the fact that they kind of look like maggots …
Katie D
August 12th

Yes, traditionally scents do affect your productivity. Read up on aromatherapy to know more. I’m a writer and often use essential oils. For example, if it’s a cold day and I’m sluggish and having difficulty concentrating I will burn some rosemary essence in an oil burner. If I’m very tense and this is impeding my work then I’ll turn to lavender, and so on.
Israel
August 16th

This is so much true! And not only about edible products, but also about consumption products. Thanks for the interesting read on a fresh topic.
DesignVerb! - How Colors May Affect Your Productivity and Success
August 19th

[...] I just came by this great little update on how colors affect your productivity and success. Not as detailed, but a nice glimpse into [...]
Mark B.
August 24th

Not very detailed is it? Never the less I did change my computers desktop to red. I’m such a procrastinator I’m even thinking of painting an office wall red. That will put off any “real” office work for half a day or more!
Dr. T
August 27th

I’m trying to think of where I’ve seen something more useless than this “study” and its advice. Nothing comes to mind. Has anyone seen offices colored in any of the three primary colors of light? And does anyone believe that red, the color of blood, increases appetite more than other colors? Or that blue lowers appetite? Dieters would be painting their entire environment blue. Personally, I found the brown and blue concoctions more appetizing than the close-up of strawberries. I also found the red photo with the melting gel tower more relaxing than the blue photo with the vivid flower-like (shuriken-like?) image on a white dust background. Of course, I could be atypical in regards to color.

The skeptic in me says this type of information doesn’t pass the BS detector test.
Do Colours Affect Our Mood? « Student Voice
September 30th

[...] http://www.dirjournal.com/business-journal/how-colors-may-effect-your-productivity-and-success/ [...]
katie martin
December 2nd

Ann whats your last name i need to site u for a project.
- Hasan
  December 8th
  
  Ann Smarty
Angela
February 16th

Ann, I really need your last name also. I need to cite it for a paper. It would help a lot.