Psychologists have known for many years that colour can affect how people feel. For this reason, attention should be given to colour schemes when decorating places such as offices and hospitals. How true is this statement? How far does colour influence people’s health and capacity for work. v.4

It is a proven fact that each colour influences the moods of those within view of it, however, its usefulness is vastly overestimated. This essay will explain why any emphasis placed on colour by interior designers in workplaces, such as offices and hospitals, may be completely misplaced. First of all, while in some cases a change in decor may impact one person in an office positively, encouraging them to work harder, there is no reason to believe that it will not have the opposite effect on the person sitting next to him. Perception of colour is subjective, and reactions to it are equally so. For this reason colours used to increase productivity will most likely have no measurable effect on the output of the business as a whole. Attention might be better directed towards other areas of interior design, such as providing well-lit rooms and ergonomically designed chairs, shown to improve the heatlh and productivity of all workers. Similarly, there is no predicting the reactions of individual patients recovering in brightly or drably coloured wards. A recently published study showed that 50% of patients recovering in vibrantly coloured rooms recovered more quickly than patients in plain white rooms. The other 50%, of course, recovered slower than these controls. * In conclusion, while one person might find that decorating their home office or sick room imbues them with much needed vitality, there is no way to be sure that of transferring these positive effects when dealing with the general public, made up of millions of unique, and very different, individuals.