Office Colors

Choosing Your Office Colors to Enhance Your Office Space

What you choose for your office colors can have a dramatic effect on your clients and other visitors. These effects are subliminal and instinctive, creating either a good or bad perception of your business.

The colors you use in your office should change with the type of business being conducted in the office. Your image is being projected, and judgments being made, the moment your door is opened.

The right choice for your office colors can ensure that your image is a positive one.

Corporate and more serious types of businesses such as bankers, accountants, lawyers and financial advisers often use natural colors, such as creams and beiges, combined with wood grain finishes to create a refined and sophisticated look, but these colors can also give the impression of being boring and safe, staid and dull.

Blue denotes honesty, loyalty, wisdom, conservatism, security and confidence so it is a good color for these types of businesses. Green is calming, suggesting security, growth and money and dark green is often used by corporate businesses to indicate wealth and prestige. Accessorize the office with a little of the complementary color, orange with the blue or red with the green, to balance the effect of these colors.

The power colors of navy blue, dark green and burgundy give a message of control, responsibility, and confidence to clients of these more serious corporate businesses.

Not all businesses will benefit by using office colors that are good for corporate businesses. In other offices you need to look at the degree of seriousness of the business and choose colors appropriately. In general, the brighter the color the less serious is the business. You need to choose colors appropriate to the age of your clients, their cultural background, whether male or female and the type of business you are promoting.

Office Colors in the Reception Area

This is usually the first point of contact for your client so it is important to create a positive and favorable impression. Your client must feel welcome when they first enter your premises, so a soft muted orange such as peach would create a positive and welcoming feeling while soft yellow would be cheerful and happy. If decisions are made in the reception area a soft blue-green will assist in decision-making.

If your business is a beauty salon, pink or a soft coral color in the reception area will give the impression that your client will be pampered and indulged.

With the waiting room for a dentist, doctor or naturopath, it is best to choose calming and reassuring colors such as green or blue, with a touch of pink for compassion. Yellow, while cheerful and happy, can cause anxiety in people who are already stressed.

General Office Space

With general office space you need to understand the messages of the colors you choose so you create the effect you want.

Blues and greens will keep a calm atmosphere, but too much of these colors and staff productivity may slow. Adding a small amount of red, orange or yellow somewhere in the space will increase the energy flow and enhance productivity.

Too much red and aggression and anger may be the result, too much orange or peach color will create a social and talkative atmosphere, while too much yellow will cause anxiety and stress in some.

Training and Lecture Rooms

Turquoise, the color of creative and mass communication, in light to medium tones, is appropriate for walls in training rooms.

Turquoise helps in calming the nerves of public speakers and is a good color for teaching. Printing on yellow colored handouts assists recipients to retain what they are reading.

Some yellow in front of participants who are participating in the training, either on the wall or behind a teaching board, will help them to retain what you are teaching.

Learn more about the psychological meanings of color in your business, the best colors for your business cards and stationery, packaging, website colors and business clothing to understand the subconscious messages you are sending to your clients.

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For more information on:

the color red

the color orange

the color yellow

the color green

the color blue

the color indigo

the color purple

the color turquoise

the color pink

the color magenta

the color brown

the color gray

the color silver

the color gold

the color white

the color black