The Importance of Choosing the Right Office Colour Scheme

Like your business logo, your office communicates to people the personality of your business. While your office’s colour scheme may fall to the back of your mind when doing a fit-out, taking the time to consider the colours you will use can have a positive impact on the space.

Choosing the right colour scheme for your office:

Your place of business, aka office, is like your business logo; it communicates to clients or consumers as well as employees, the personality of your business and contributes to overall brand identity. It is important to have a consistent and unifying brand identity that communicates to people who you are and what you do. So, before you go for a regular commercial office fit out, your office colour scheme needs to be thought out and consistent, not overlooked.

Colour psychology in choosing an office colour scheme:

Colour psychology is a big deal and if you’re not utilizing it, then you’re missing out on a golden opportunity. Colours elicit emotions, and a physical response. And you have control over that. Your office is your business’ domain; being thoughtful in choosing your colour scheme and identifying the emotional and physical potential it has is a powerful tool that you can easily make the most of.

So the question is, how do you want your current and future clients/ customers and employees to feel when they step into your office?

Colour Meanings:

Red: Red is exciting, youthful and bold. It speeds up and intensifies our reactions.

Orange: In terms of personality, orange communicates warmth and friendliness. It is a cheerful colour that draws attention and is associated with confidence, courage and energy.

Yellow: Yellow is the cheerful colour in the colour spectrum. It elicits optimism, clarity, and warmth. It is stimulating and attention-grabbing.

Green: The colour of growth, balance and nature, green is calming, peaceful and assuring.

Blue: Blue evokes the mind and as a result associates itself with intelligence. The colour also communicates trust, strength and security.

Purple: Purple is the colour of royalty and denotes wealth and luxury. It also implies wisdom and imagination.

Brown: The colour brown is associated with the earth and holds warmth and seriousness. It implies reliability and support.

Black: Black communicates power and authority as well as security and sophistication.

Grey: Grey is modern and sophisticated and communicates timelessness as well as neutrality.

White: The colour white symbolises purity. It also represents newness, cleanliness, simplicity and sophistication.

How to use colour in your office:

The right colour scheme for your business will balance brand identity with the functionality of the space. When it comes to using colour in your office, here are a few things to consider:  

Branding:

The first place to draw inspiration from when choosing your office colour scheme should be your branding. It’s an easy place to start because a lot of the hard consideration has been done for you. Lift your colour palette and envisage how you might use it in your workspace.

Purpose:

You need to be conscious of how a space will be used and let that shape your decision. For example, it would be appropriate for a medical clinic to use cool colours, such as blue or green, as they calm and relax. In office spaces for creatives like writers or designers, warm colours would be better used to stimulate the brain to prompt creativity and thought.

Size:

Size matters to your colour scheme. If working with a small space, it may be inappropriate to overload the room with dark colours as it would make it feel even more cramped. Using neutral colours can open up small spaces and darker colour can close in spaces which may be appropriate if working with a very large space.

Texture:

Introducing texture into your office makes the space more interesting and stimulating and is also a great way to break up blocks of colour of similar colour. This is easily achieved through the styling of your office interior with furniture and accessories with unique and different material qualities, like timber, metal or stone.

Accent pieces:

You don’t want to overload your room with colour and risk doing too much, so use accent pieces like a feature wall, a piece of furniture, cushions, or even a painting, to add a pop of colour to the space. Accent pieces are a great way to revamp an old room and are more budget friendly if you don’t have the capacity to start from scratch.

Your office colour scheme is a powerful tool you can use to represent your business. With colour psychology on your side, you can shape the way someone feels when they encounter your business.  So don’t underestimate the power of colour and talk it out thoroughly with an office designer before you go ahead with the fit-out.