Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Putting Color to Work
This is the time of year (curiously, when it is most difficult to use natural ventilation to disperse paint fumes), when people start to think about painting walls. And that naturally leads to the question, “What color should they be?” Scientists have learned a lot about how humans experience color, and their findings can help answer that question. Regularly in this column, I’ve talked about how color saturation and brightness influence mental state. Colors that are not very saturated but relatively light, such as sage greens with lots of white mixed into them, are great options for spaces where people need to think creatively or do concentration-intense knowledge work. Colors that are more saturated but less bright, such as kelly greens, are good selections for places where people need to be more active. The effects of seeing Baker-Miller pink, also known as drunk tank pink and bubble gum pink, have …
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