The psychology of colour, shape and design
Colour
Psychologists recognise that certain colours and shapes affect human moods. Red may shock, whereas black and grey could be depressing. Bright colours are thought to increase productivity in factories and soothing shades quicken hospital patient recovery times. Areas look bigger with light colours. Human attention is drawn to warmer colours, such as reds, most easily.
Colours are also seen as making certain statements. For example, royal blue is seen as showing loyal, conservative attitudes. Peach is warm. Wine is elegant. Red can have ambiguous meanings: passionate and energetic or anger or danger, following its representation in the natural world.
Pleasant meeting spaces with welcoming colours encourage people to congregate. But it is also possible, when prescribed, to restrict how comfortable people feel with unrelaxing colours and functional furniture. Clearly, this serves the purpose of ensuring people move on quickly in the fast food restaurant, as with McDonald's '20-minute' seat policy, but the opposite would apply in an expensive restaurant, where the intention would be to get the customer to remain, and continue ordering, for as long as possible.
Greenery helps people to relax and renew, reducing aggression.
It has also been shown in studies that areas of vegetation around buildings make them more soothing and can even cut crime. In bringing people together outdoors, surveillance is increased and criminals discouraged. The green and groomed appearance of an apartment building is also a cue that owners and residents care about a property, and watch over it and each other.
Shape
The use of random shapes to stimulate the imagination is a well-known artistic technique. Leonardo da Vinci said: 'If you look at any walls spotted with various stains, or with a mixture of different kinds of stones . . . you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers … and various groups of hills.'
For the same reasons, shapes of walls and other structures can have a profound effect on the mood of the occupant.
Design
Individuals are inextricably linked with their environment.
For many people, their environment reflects their perceived image. Period architecture – Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian – is favoured by many house-buyers over modern property because the designs are from a period of power and grandeur.
For a similar reason, the neoclassical Regency style of English architecture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries drew on grand and opulent designs from earlier Roman and other empires.
John Nash (1752-1835) was one of the Regency period's most important architects, whose designs include the grand schemes of London's Regent's Park, Regent's Street and Portland Place.
When people are comfortable in an environment, it is suspected that introducing unexpected things can unnerve them and make them feel physically ill. Changing an element as small as a carpet, is thought to be one of the causes behind so-called sick building syndrome. Conversely, anonymous, unchanging buildings can also induce the same effect of physical illness.
Once one person complains, the symptoms spread in a form of mass hysteria. If the management in control of the environment acts badly, this can also induce bad feelings about the environment. All these factors apply equally to buildings, ships and aeroplanes.
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