Lit Review

Color is one of the major ways to influence the mood of a space. When selecting a color to paint an office, the color’s reflectance values, the amount of light a surface reflects, should be taken into consideration, according to Sandra L. Ragan’s book, Interior Color by Design: A design tool for architects, interior designers, and facility managers (Ragan 33). High reflectance leads to brighter spaces and low reflectance leads to darker spaces. If the office does not have a sufficient amount of natural light coming in from windows, it is important to choose a color with a high reflectance value such as white or beige. As John Pile outlines in his book, Color in Interior Design, artificial lighting becomes increasingly common in office spaces, therefore, the use of color is used to help create a positive atmosphere (Pile 171).

Ravi Mehta and Rui Zhu recently conducted a study focusing on the effect of color on cognitive task performance. The 600 participants performed tasks on computers with words or images displayed against red, blue or neutral colored backgrounds. The results revealed that both red and blue enhance performances, but in different ways. Red increases performance for detailed orientated tasks and blue increases performance for creative tasks (Ravi 1).

Red not only increases performance but is also considered the most dynamic of all colors (Ragan 37). Red is a strong color, often associated with power so could be strategically used in offices of corporate leaders.

But are these findings limited? To what extent can these findings on the psychological effects of color by applied to different cultures? Especially in an environment such as an office building where people from all over with different backgrounds are thrown together it is important to make sure that design elements are going to be able to positively affect everyone.

These questions were answered in a study conducted by Ralph B. Hupka, Zbigniew Zaleski, Jurgen Otto, Lucy Reidl and Nadia V. Tarabrina. They collected data from Germany, Mexico, Poland, Russia and the United States to ensure that subjects would differ in politico-economic systems, language, history and literature (Hupka 4). Regardless of language and culture, people associate similar adjectives with the same colors. In addition, the same colors are considered to be strong or weak (Osgood, 1960). This study confirms that color can elicit strong feelings and are important to take into consideration when designing the interior of non residential buildings, particularly offices.

Another study conducted by Canan Ceylan, Jan Dul and Serpil Aytac also examines how other aspects of an office environment besides color can stimulate creativity. Managers of large manufacturing companies were asked to rate both the creativity potential, as well as the physical aspects of 25 different office environments. The results reveal that office interior design influence the creativity potential. In order to establish high creativity potential, it is important for offices to have lower complexity, more plants, bright lighting conditions, windows and cooler colors (Ceylan 1). This study is congruent with Mehta and Zhu’s findings because blue falls into the cool color category.

In addition to color, another way design can positively influence the office environment is by the specific materials used for the walls, floors or furniture. Psychologists Bradley G. Ridoutt, Roderick D. Ball and Shaun K. Killerby discovered that wood in the interior office environment has an effect on interpersonal perception. The effect of wood on interpersonal perception was assessed through the use of photo-questionnaires. Three men and three women were super-imposed onto three images of offices with varying amounts of wood in the design. Participants in this study were asked to describe their first impressions when viewing these photos. Both open-ended and structured questions were used to reveal information on five main attributes including professionalism, success, honesty, caring and creativity. Ultimately, researchers discovered that offices using wood interiors led to a more positive first impression.

First impressions are important and how an office is designed tells visitors a lot about its occupant. In addition to the use of wood in offices to establish a more positive perception of the occupant, there are additional design qualities that have been observed that impact and influence how occupants are perceived. In his study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, David E. Campbell observed the presence or absence of living things, the presence or absence of aesthetic objects, tidiness and the effect of desk placement (Morrow 646). Favorable visitor reactions and attributions were recorded in response to the presence of both living things, such as plants, as well as aesthetic objects, such as posters or wall decorations. Clutter was found to have a significant negative impact on visitors’ response. There was a positive correlation between clutter in the office and negative feelings associated with the office occupant. Campbell concluded that the impact of desk placement is recognizable only in more austere offices (Morrow 626).