Color is an illusion, our eye illusion.

Color is a reflection of light that are mainly consists of three hues spectrum. When we look at a certain thing, whether it’s plastic, paper, wood, fabric, glass or our skin, we see colors, millions of colors that our eye ball can accept and interpret it as a color.

When our eye ball catches a certain hue or as it known “color” a message is being sent to our brain and our brain is the engine that interprets that this is a color of a certain shade; red, blue, white, yellow, etc.

History of colors

Colors has been around forever, since the beginning of our civilization and even earlier, before our civilization, creatures with the ability to think and recognize certain colors apart ware using colors to communicate with other creatures from the same kind.

Than our civilization appeared and adopted this way of communication, since a stone age human couldn’t communicate through a specific language or any other sound. They would draw to each other or would create drawings on stones as a history to their children or other human alike that might come later.

Colors usually used to come from the mother earth, nature, was the main and the only source of colors; red came from blood, yellow came from a daisy, green from grass, brown from soil, orange from stone and beige from sand, etc. and they never mixed those colors, if they needed a different color, they would usually go out to the woods and find some other plant that would give them a different color.

The process of actually getting that plant or any other material to an actual paint that they would be able to use was very interesting, they would take the plant or a stone or whatever it is and grind it to powder, take an animal or olives or any other material that can produce oil and mixed the powder with that oil, and… we got a paint an oil paint.

Interesting isn’t…

This process we use till this very day in the paints production industry, although majority of paints (powder) that we have today on the market are chemicals, the oil paints, water paints, gauche paints and acrylic they are all chemicals. So please don’t try and taste them or eat them…

If you would really like to use all natural paints, you defiantly can! But mind you they would be extremely expensive and hard to get, so if you still thinking of using all natural, keep in mind that you might have to order them from some other country, because I haven’t seen those in stores here.
Material and colors

Ok, we’ve learned about what is color and history of colors

Now, as we’ve learned about the eye illusion, you should understand by now that how we see color is really depends on the material this color is applied to, and the most important element is the lighting, since it is the reflection of light that influence the color that we see, so… having said that and remind you the topic that we are covering here today, you should really consider in taking this issue of color in the work space very seriously.

As I mentioned in this handout and my lecture that our eyes are just work as a transmitter to our brain, and so that means that colors are very much influence our state of mind, moods, comfort and physical state of our bodies.

Color and mental & physical influence of it

I am sure of the fact that some time you walked in to some place like someone’s home, café, bar, restaurant, office, school, or any other facility and you felt very uncomfortable, edgy, aggravated, headaches, back pain, tiredness, etc. and I can bet that you never took your thought deep enough to go and research or try and understand why you felt that way as soon as you walked into that place.

Let me tell you a secret… it was the colors on the walls or ceiling that made you feel that way. Mind you there is also some part in that of the interior space design and traffic flow configuration. But the biggest part of it, its colors!
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There was a case several years ago in New York, a restaurant that always got robed, on an ongoing basis, the owners never could figure out why, until one day when some customer came in to eat and someone by accident pushed him, the individual that pushed the other by mistake apologized several times, but the other individual just got so angry that no mater how many times that individual apologized it didn’t mater anymore, the upset customer pulled-out a gun and just aggressively started shooting everybody in that restaurant.

After the incident, police investigators took on themselves an extra effort of trying to understand why… and the answer that they found was very surprising to them, the restaurants walls ware painted red, but not just red it was pure red color.

Colors influence our state of mind and from that we get our moods, red color if used improperly will get you aggravated, edgy and even passionately angry. If used properly it can get you hungry, sexually turned on, exited, energized and passionately happy about something.

Lady in Red… (We always find woman very beautiful and attractive if she wears red, guess why?).
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Late back when Coca-Cola just started their journey as an energizing drink manufacturer they came-up with a logo but they couldn’t understand why people get edgy from that drink, while they ware drinking it.

After several attempts to research this whole product they went back to the product and the ingredients of it, and couldn’t find anything till one day one of them got the point, they spend enormous amount of money to come-up with this proper red that would excite people and let them remember the logo and the product.

The red that we see today on the Coca-Cola trucks and also the drinks is a bit different from one another, trucks use a softer and wormer red, so we would recognize it immediately, but we’ll not get edgy from it and the drinks use darker but still worm red so we would recognize the drink and get excited from it and buy it.
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MacDonald’s is one of the largest fast food franchise companies in the world, and if you would ever take a moment and look at their logo colors and also at their restaurants colors in side, you would see that they rotate around two major colors only.

Red and Yellow, I am sure that none of you ever took the time to understand and research about this. As I mentioned here earlier if the red is proper it would make you hungry and yellow somehow gained a huge reputation over the past 150 years of representing cheap, fast and mass production industries.

So if you would combine those two colors used by MacDonald’s company and specifically restaurants, our mental reaction to a visual concept of MacDonald’s is eat fast and cheap, and one more thing,

I will tell you another secret… if you would pay attention to the time of how long you are staying in side and eat that hamburger or french-fries, you would be amazed by the fact that you can’t stay there longer than one hour, average is 30 to 45 minutes, majority of the time people stay there no longer than 30 minutes.

Did you ever have questioned why? It is quite fascinating, MacDonald’s hired an industrial designer that would design and create chairs that an average individual would not be able to sit on for more than one hour. And I don’t think I have to explain to you why they did that (but if you still can’t understand why, it was done in order to increase sales in their locations across the world. They decided to do available space to everyone who comes in at any time!).
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Some of the Toronto hospitals used to have their walls and linoleum flooring done in two colors, walls used to be grey and the floor used to be very light green with a very large mixture of grey to it, nearly 75% grey and 25% light green.

Not the management and not the doctors of those hospitals couldn’t understand why all of the patients with open wounds will take them twice longer time to get better, than in any other hospital in the city.

They called a building specialist thinking that they have some kind of problem with the air circulations in the building; this specialist happened to have a relative that was in home décor industry, having to examine the building and the interior space, the décor specialist told them to change the colors of the walls and flooring, to a lighter and more worm color, something along the lines of peach shades. And the hospital actually tried that, and what do you know… employees became more enthusiastic at work and patients started to heal faster.
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Having said that, if you can now understand that color has not only an effect on our state of mind but also our physical state.

Now, let’s touch the interior space aspect in terms of what would, you like to do with your space…

Lets assume that you are redecorating your working space; office, factory, warehouse, library, etc. before you start doing anything, you should sit down and think what would you like this space to be used for.

If you want your employees to work well in you office, you have to make your space bright. That means you may leave the space white or very light yellow, baby blue (light & gentle blue) or very bright orange. If you would like your employees work hard and fast in the warehouse you should make your walls light orange, light and warm red, light green or light violet.

If you are running some kind of factory you should really consider darker and warm colors for your space, light browns or light maroon. Library or schools are different spaces and very tricky, you need those spaces to be used by your facility workers and also users (readers and/or students) and there we should really be careful with colors, I would suggest worm oranges for those kind of spaces, but we also risk in terms of people will be filling like having a talk with each other, since orange dose that to people.

It is something along the lines of your home, if you want to fall a sleep fast and have a very relaxing and well resting night, you should paint your bedroom walls in a worm green even if its not going to be the whole bedroom but just one wall, you will have a very good sleep time in that room. Your dining room or any other room where you think that people should interact, you would choose orange colors. Kitchen should stay white or maybe peachy shades. Bathroom, you defiantly should consider blue’s so it would give that live and energizing feeling while you take care of your self, and I can go on and on…

So, if you really trying to choose the right colors for your library, well… here is the deal, you should plan your traffic flow and seating area first, based on that configuration you would have a bigger picture of where you are expecting readers and where you are expecting your workers to be majority of the time.

And that picture will give an exact idea of where you should apply what colors. I would say, your workers area should be more purple, violet and white, because you want the white color give a fresh, live and a structured feeling to your workers, purple would give the coziness, warmth, family and friendship feeling at the work place, violet would give them the concentration on their responsibilities and what they have to do at the moment.

You reading and visitor area, should have light orange walls in order for your visitors and readers feel friendly, welcomed, interactive, fresh and open to any exploration whether it is going to be a book or other reader or visitor, also you should consider brown spots, like your pillars or shelving’s and that color defiantly will give them the concentration that they would need to read without any destructions and without paying attention if somebody will walk by.

Also, your carpet flooring should be light grey, light grey will give this light weight to the space, closer to nature and it will make your readers and visitor relaxed and come, so they would not feel edgy or aggravated.

This interesting combination of so many colors; purple, violet, white, orange, brown and grey, will give your space a true accent of a very welcoming place, fun, relaxing, intellectual, light weight and interesting to be at.

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Our life’s based on colors, we live by them we eat and drink by colors, choose our partners for life or business by colors (Aura Colors [not skin]), and we create colors and survive by them!

Everything is color and so everything is an elusion and so nothing is real and so we don’t exist and so we are an elusion and so we are color!