The scientific reason you need to paint your home office green
Interior design Instagram accounts have enjoyed newfound popularity during the pandemic. So far, there’s been plenty of focus on how to transform your house into a home – what about creating the perfect home office space? Whether you’d like to increase your productivity, stay focused or reduce stress, choosing your wall paint colour is the first and most important step.
Colour psychology is the study of hues as determinants of human behaviour. It perceives colour as a communication tool powerful enough to signal action, influence performance and even determine consumer purchases. A recent study by Stelrad found that males are least productive when surrounded by orange or purple – but what colours should women avoid?
Psychologist and wellbeing consultant Lee Chambers MSc MBPsS examined the psychological effects of paint colours in relation to the emotions they influence when applied in a home office. The study revealed the most common home office colour. Among the 4,325 participants, 31% declared white was their most favourable paint choice, followed by grey and cream, with 23% and 17% respectively.
The study of the optimal WFH colours does not limit itself to the hues that work best in our eye line. Remote conferencing video platforms like Zoom offer great alternatives to customise your virtual “portrait”, but a physical background alternative could allow your interlocutor to get a sense of your personal and working traits. A theme of peach and pink will infuse to the atmosphere welcoming and happy tones, while purple is noble and serious.
Another way to add the purifying benefits of green in your eye line is by having plants on your desk, “Your desktop’s colour is continually in your eye line and is a perfect place to utilise productive colour, get some plants in your eye line, and you get both the green vista and the air-purifying benefits too.” said Lee.
Finally, one might question why doing a complete renovation when offices are about to reopen? Before raising the argument of the importance of change, by re-painting your home office one gets to absorb the beneficial use of colour as a healing method. (Especially if you choose green.) Even if digital workplaces are soon to be a distant past, you’ll still have that green room to return home to and relieve your work stress.
