Stop for a moment and visualize your workspace. If you happen to be at your desk now, look around you. What colors predominate? Are they upbeat, inspiring, or rather dull? Are you seeing colors that inspire creativity?
If you take charge of your workspace’s layout and design, you’re already halfway there to becoming more creative. That doesn’t mean you have to go over the top with the decorations or paint your walls a new color.
The important thing is to make your workspace feel like it’s really yours, even if you’re working in an office building. There’s no better way to do this than by adding creativity-enhancing colors.
Find out how to spark creativity for writing and more with the right colors.
Go for a Strong Shade of Blue
Our mind likes blue. We associate it with both the sky and the sea, even if these aren’t actually blue, at least not most of the time. Blue has inspired poets, painters, and writers over the centuries.
According to Google, blue is the most productive color. But it’s important to make the distinction between creativity and productivity.
Do you have to create a lot of content every day? Or generate a lot of ideas? Fortunately, you don’t have to choose. You can make yourself more creative and more productive at the same time. All you have to do is combine blue with the next color.
Brighten Up Your Desk with Some Yellow
Yellow is upbeat, vibrant, and fun. According to The Beginner’s Guide to Colour Psychology, it can boost creative design. It can also make you more open to accepting your creative ideas.
However, when adding yellow to your workspace, there are some things you want to avoid. Not all yellows are upbeat – our mind associates mellow yellows more with jaundice and illness than with optimism. If old, faded yellow wallpaper covers your workspace walls, don’t expect much of a creative boost from it.
Also, too much yellow can be overwhelming. In nature, we don’t get that much yellow except from the sunlight, and that’s closely woven into the greens and browns and other colors of the world. Similarly, when adding yellow to your workspace, try to integrate it with other colors.
Green Things Up
Green is often named among the colors that boost creativity. But it does this in a different way compared to yellow or blue. Green is a relaxing, soothing color that conjures the calm and reassurance we feel when strolling through a leafy park or looking at a forest from the window of a train.
Green stimulates us without raising our blood pressure like red or yellow does. That makes it a must-add color for any creative person’s workspace. But put it where you will see it. Having a green chair may be cool, but you’re not going to look at your chair while working, right?
Go beyond the usual pot plat or plastic flower. Choose a green coffee cup, a notebook with a green cover, or a green lamp. In fact, anything that’s green will do.
Should You Add Some Red, Too?
They make Ferraris red for a reason – red really catches the eye. As one of the most stimulating colors, red can focus your attention. But this color is closely associated in our mind with blood and danger. It can make our hearts beat faster and raise our blood pressure.
The stimulation red provides is usually physical rather than mental. For this reason, it can be distracting if you’re working mostly on mental tasks. It’s okay to have some red in your workspace, especially around something that you should pay attention to, i.e. the frame of your pinboard. But too much red can actually lower your creativity.
Don’t Forget About Orange
Orange is pleasant and energetic. It can liven up an otherwise quiet workspace in a warm and fun way. While yellow is an emotional color and red a physical one, orange falls somewhere in between. It’s a good secondary color to have in your workspace.
Finding orange things to blend in with the other stuff on your desk doesn’t have to be challenging. Just keep some oranges where you can see them – but make sure you eat them before they turn stale. And while you’re at it, grab an orange-colored coffee cup, as it can not only boost your creativity but also make your coffee taste better.
Learning from Nature
As you can see, blue, yellow, and green can really make us more creative according to the psychology of color. These are the colors that we really want in our workspace. However, we shouldn’t forget about the other colors.
In nature, colors don’t appear in isolation. So, think twice before buying a green desk and a blue computer and painting the walls yellow. Instead, find ways to integrate these colors with the other colors in your workspace. More neutral colors like gray, black, or a soft white can make colors that boost creativity stand out.
Getting the Colors Right
While a bright blue can stimulate you, a more faded, low-saturation blue will have instead a soothing effect. The intensity of colors matters, and it’s something you need to take into account. Choose bright, vibrant colors to maximize your creativity.
Another crucial thing to keep in mind is that combining two different colors doesn’t cancel each other out. On the contrary, it helps you tap into the benefits of both. You don’t have to pain your workspace all green or all blue. You can mix in the two, and add some white and other colors in there for balance.
We hope you enjoyed this post on colors that spark creativity. To discover more ways to boost your creativity, check out the other posts on this subject on our blog. From rearranging your desk to changing your work habits, you’ll find wide-ranging tips on becoming more creative in an organic way.