Painting your home can be a daunting task. Picking out a color, measuring the area, cleaning the space, and planning time off are all factors to take into consideration. However, with the proper research and preparation, your new paint job will go smoothly and efficiently.

When it comes to researching, there may be one more factor you forgot about – the different kinds of paints and finishes to choose from. While you may know what color and palette you want for your home, considering the finish and type of paint is just as essential.

Color psychology doesn’t just affect how you may feel at home in your living room or bathroom. The power of combined color schemes also affects the productivity of you and your staff at work. Most businesses choose their brand colors and leave them at that. They might slap those colors on a business card, but that doesn’t always work when selecting a color palette for your building. Here are several common commercial paint colors, their psychological effect, and how you can use them to liven up your office space.

Blue

Blue is one of the most attractive colors for anyone, despite traditionally being labeled as a color for just men and boys. Blue is a color that calms and soothes, promotes communication, and improves efficiency, all at the same time. There is a reason that it is the most popular color for large companies and businesses. If your brand colors include the color blue, consider incorporating it into your office space as the base color. This will help set the tone for how you want your office to function.

Red

Red is the second most popular color used in brands. It is a color that evokes strong emotions such as urgency, attention, and intensity. It is often used for seasonal sales (as it promotes urgency) and restaurants (as it also encourages appetites). How much of this color you use in your office space will depend on the type of business you are running. It will also depend on the amount of red present in your logo. If you only have a sliver of red in it, it makes little sense to use it as your base color. A better use of it might be in interview spaces or meeting rooms, where intensity, attention, and focus are required.

Grey

Grey is a great color that is very neutral to everything around it. While most popular brands include colors that pop, they almost always combine it with a shade of grey. Grey brings peace of mind and clarity into a space. It also provides a look of class and professionalism, which is a great impression to give when clients visit your office space. Since grey is such a neutral color, it is the perfect base color upon which your other brand colors can build upon. With grey as the base, you can add highlights of your other brand colors in your office space. This lets your office space look professional and creative at the same time.

Green

Green is a color that is growing in popularity for brands and logos. Once a color designated for just vegetables and money is now turning into a symbol for sustainability and environmental safekeeping. There is a reason that companies as large as Mcdonald’s have replaced their traditional, red-themed restaurants with an earth-green as the base color in various locations throughout the world. Green has a balancing and harmonizing effect. It provokes ideas of wealth, stability, nature, and renewal. If you have green as part of your brand, consider using it as a secondary color in your office space. This will give your employees and clients the feeling of wealth, stability, and renewal every time they walk into the office. These feelings are vital in a business, as it indicates that they’ll be around for a long time to come.

The way a room is painted has an enormous effect on the way a person perceives it. We don’t just mean visually either. Room color can change the size and emotional appeal of a room. No, paint won’t magically stretch the walls and give you high ceilings, but it can make a small room seem more spacious. Here are three different effects that paint has on room perception.

Mood

The way a room looks is probably at the top of the list of most people’s remodel projects. However, paint doesn’t just change the color on the walls; it also changes how a person feels inside a room. When you step inside a room, your brain and emotions automatically spur different reactions. This isn’t an opinion either, a lot of research has been done and scientific studies conducted on the effects of color psychology. When planning your next room remodel, think about the vibe you want the room to express. If the room is going to be a place to relax in, try using lighter colors. If the room will be a place for critical thinking, try using colors that encourage energy and creativity.

Enlarge a Space

A magician does a great job at making something regular appear as if it is something else a master of illusion. If you use the right techniques, you too can take on the role of illusionist and completely change the perception of a room with something as simple as a bucket of paint. The paint color in a room can make the room appear larger, wider, smaller, longer; you name it! If you have a small room and want it to appear larger, try painting the walls a light color. Also, paint the ceiling a semi-white gloss and try to let in as much light as possible. All of these tips combined will allow the room to feel more spacious. The light coming in will bounce off the light-colored walls, and the white ceiling will appear higher than it really is. If you only want the space to look wider, try painting the ceiling and one wall the same color. This will highlight the space to the wall and ceiling and help it feel wider.

Shrink a Room

Believe it or not, there are instances when making a room feel smaller makes more sense. For example, let’s say there is a living room in your home that you don’t know what to do with. Instead of just constantly throwing clutter at it until it looks full, there are ways to set the room up so that it feels cozy instead of cluttered. Painting an accent wall directly across from the entrance of the room can make the room feel shorter. Another technique to use is applying dark colors on the walls and matching them to the furniture and design of the room. This allows the walls to appear closer to the furniture than they really are and brings the focus of the room to the center. Remember, comfortable and cozy rooms look much better than spacious rooms with random furniture and items thrown in there to fill space.