Color is all around us — but have you considered how colors might affect your mood, your workplace performance, and your emotions? Color psychology, the study of different hues on the psychology of the human, explores the power of the colors all around us. Throughout this series, we’ll be exploring how color can impact your mood, your workplace performance, and even your emotions.
The Psychology of Red
Red is a stimulate. While it associates emotions like strength and warmth, it contains a lot of power and many different responses. The color red is one that can ignite strong emotions in people. Red is associated with passion, love, anger, danger, dominance, and obsession. Red is a very particular color–one that is very subjective to every human that encounters it. Despite this, red has always had a powerful hold over performance in the workplace. Red is never a boring color, and always has a powerful punch. Warmer colors like oranges, yellows, and reds are at both ends of the emotional spectrum, making our brains feel emotions from comfort to anger.
The hue of the red is very important. Reds leaning orange are energizing, where deeper reds are more quiet and intimate. Think of where you’ve seen a color of red that calms you. Is it slightly darker, more purple? More burgundy? You’ll often find these hues and shades in old restaurants or bars because of the quietness and intimacy it portrays. Red carpet might be another hue of red that comes to mind. The color carries a lot of weight and has many uses. Maybe it makes you feel important, powerful, and ready for anything. The hue of pure red is where the discomfort plays psychologically. The bright, rich color is very loud and can easily overpower a room. It can be distracting, so it’s not a number one option for the workplace. Be careful to not stress out your employees.
Red in the Workplace
These factors can create many different effects on workers. Many use red in the workplace as an accent color, this works well because of how bold the color is. It’s a terrific accent color to spur on some of the other more relaxing colors. Designers use this to their advantage with creating spaces that are mainly used recreationally. This works because it becomes psychologically uncomfortable to remain in, so employees return to their work faster. Painting an entire space red can create an uncomfortable urgency and anxiety in your workers.
Try incorporating some red in certain areas of your office. Start small and see how it influences your workers. Are they drawn to it? Finding the perfect balance between two colors can create an attractive work environment where you will find a lot of the office working well within the space. Take notice to where the productivity is the highest. Does adding some red increase that? Even subtle changes like the addition of red chairs or a red painting can make a significant change in your space. Sometimes it’s the little changes that are the most effective.
What Else Does The Color Red Do?
Red has other interesting elements, many health-related. Red, being the color of blood, raises blood pressure, respiration, metabolism, appetite, boosts testosterone, and brain activity. While much of the emotional reaction to red is due to the natural physiological function of the brain, the association also has a lot to do with how your brain reacts. Because of all the red around us from stop lights and traffic signs to firetrucks to blood, we can get stressed out from the color red. It’s a careful balance from using red to inject energy into your workspace without injecting negative emotions.
