The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of nine workplace interior colors such as red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, beige, gray and white on the mood of Thai office workers, including the association of colors and moods in gender differences. . Suggestions for management practice and recommendations for future research on Thai office workers' mood and workplace interior colors are discussed. And also, working on a quantitative research to examine the effects of nine workplace interior colors such as red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, beige, gray and white, on the mood of office workers Thai, including testing a different perception in mood. affected by the nine colors between the sexes.
Furthermore, the research continues to collect some opinion data of color preference, designated office color and distracting color to give an advantage idea of workplace interior development. To investigate the effect of nine workplace colors such as red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, beige, gray and white on the moods of Thai office workers.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Color
- What is Color?
- How can we perceive color?
- Color Dimension
- Warm versus Cool Colors
In 1672 Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated a color phenomenon by refracting white light with a glass prism and observed that the light was composed of all the colors of the rainbow such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (ROYGBIV color). Mahnke suggested that the perception of color is to 'experience' it in both conscious and unconscious ways. This concept was used to create the "Pyramid of Color Experience" shown in Figure 2.2, which assumes six basic, interrelated factors that affect the human experience of color in a systematic way.
Fourth, cultural influences and mannerisms are the color association with the particularities of specific cultures and groups or regions and religions they have experienced and believed. Fifth: Influence of trends, fashion and styles that affect the change of color in a certain time related to sales and market and man's state of boredom. The top of the pyramid is a personal relationship to color, which individually expresses one's own color preference, like or dislike.
Color perception is usually described in three dimensions of the color experience, namely hue, saturation and brightness, as shown in Figure 2.3. Hue refers to the quality of color and corresponds to the color names that individuals perceive in much the same way, such as red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, and so on. The more saturated the stimulus, the stronger or brighter the color experience and the less saturated, the more it appears white, gray or black.
Many of the first color ordering systems presented color on two-dimensional maps until the 19th century. The first color theorist, Professor Albert Munsell, hypothesized color on a three-dimensional model based on formal progressions of hue, value, and chroma or saturation.
The influence of Colors
- Color and emotion association
- Color preference
- Color and Genders
Gray is the color between white (light) and black (dark), as it is said to be vague in either direction of the gray zone. Also, studies of the relationship between color preferences and arousal by Walters et al. 1982) found that red, yellow and orange were rated as the most arousing colors. Additionally, Khouw's (2002) study also supports that men were more tolerant of dull colors.
In contrast, Kuller (1976) showed that men showed more boredom and stress than women in the gray room. McGuinness and Lewis (1976) and Hoyenga and Wallace (1979) found that women were more sensitive to red and yellow, while men appeared more sensitive to colors in blue-green light. In today's workplace development the concept of 'sense of place' is desired in building its environment like other places.
Therefore sense of place aims at creating a positive experience for office users, as both employee and employer feel a sense of belonging and meaning where they work. The significant result revealed that office workers had lower confusion in the red room than in the green room. With gender differences, women had more tension and less energy than men in the three-color rooms.
The research showed that low screeners had more depression than high screeners in the red room and also more anger and depression than high screeners in the white room.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
- Research Design
- Data Collection
- Instrument
- Data Analysis
Then the twelve moods will be classified into six moods such as anger, confusion, depression, fatigue, tension and strength for analysis. The mood items selected are part of the Profile of Mood States, a 65-rating scale (POMS; McNair et al., 1971). The researcher specifically selected only significant items that were related to work mood and used unipolar scales or a 5-point scale (0 = not at all, 4 = very much) to measure the level of experience with mood.
Furthermore, to determine the color preferences, designated workplace colors and distracting colors, the following questions will be asked. The frequency table will be used for the analysis of the demographic data and compare mean function used for measuring the averages of mood level affected by each color and to investigate the impact of colors on moods of gender differences. The result of statistics will be translated into simple language and concluded for real management practice.
Next, Chapter 4 summarizes the demographics of the respondents and the findings from the quantitative study of; the effect of nine workplace interior colors on the mood of Thai office workers, the different effects of the nine colors on moods between the sexes, and the perception of their color preference.
RESEARCH FINDING
Demographic profile of respondents
The majority of respondents' ages were between 23 and 30 years old: 58% of the total respondents, followed by the age group between 31 and 45 years old, or 37% of the total respondents. Most respondents worked in an accounting and finance unit, which represented 20% of the total respondents, followed by marketing, sales, other functional units, and personnel and resource units. In terms of job levels, the main respondents were senior/middle management level and staff level, which accounted for 50% and 42% of the total respondents respectively.
In addition, from a total of 23 other functional units' respondents, the majority population was the designer, representing 26% of the total respondents.
Effect of nine workplace interior colors on Thai office workers’
Effect of nine workplace interior colors on Thai office workers’
The color preference, prefer color to work with and distracting color
Beige was the most popular color among other colors, accounting for 62% of all respondents. Men had a greater preference for beige than women, with 71% of their positive respondents representing it, compared to only 55% of women. On the contrary, red and orange were the colors that men and women disliked the most, as indicated by 99% and 91% of all respondents, respectively.
For the office color, beige is the most frequently chosen color that all respondents like to work with, which was indicated by 71% of all male and female respondents. Red was the most annoying color according to all office workers (87%), followed by orange (60%). On the contrary, beige, green and white were the least disturbing colors in their perception, represented by 98%, 97% and 95% respectively of all respondents who spoke positively about these colors.
Then, chapter 5 provides a general conclusion and some of the managerial implications for creating a positive workplace environment obtained in this research.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Conclusion
- Effect of nine workplace interior colors on Thai office workers’
- Effect of nine workplace interior colors on Thai office workers’
- Color preference, designate workplace interior color and color distracting in the workplace
In addition, the state of fatigue was most often found in an office of neutral colors, especially gray and white. In this study, a significant difference in the effects of color on mood was different between genders and was found only in seven color rooms such as red, orange, yellow, green, purple, gray and white room. We found a difference between males and females in all moods only in the yellow room.
A similarity to the work of Kwallek, N., Lewis, C. 1996), more anger, depression and tension experienced by women than men in the white and gray office. It was because men had more preference and tolerance for dull office colors such as black, white and gray that women were found by the association of mood and gender studied by Guilford and Smith (1959) and Khouw (2002). However, only higher energy was found in females than males in the gray room which was different from past studies.
The current study found that more women experienced anger and confusion in the yellow room, depression in the orange room, confusion in the purple room than men, while having lower tension in the red room. On the contrary, the findings in Kwallek's works presented these three negative mood states as anger, confusion and depression affected by yellow, orange and purple room was found higher in females than in males and females. Furthermore, more fatigue in the green and red room was experienced by women than men.
The current study found that the most preferred color and the chosen interior color of the workplace among Thai office workers was beige, while the least chosen color was red and orange.
Managerial Implication
Furthermore, beige, green, and white were rated as the least distracting colors of the room, while red and orange were the most distracting from their perception.
Limitation and Recommendation for future research work
In addition, there are some limitations regarding time, sample size and research method in the study. Therefore, the researcher would like to suggest for future research to collect a larger sample in order to have a more realistic proportion of the population. He should also perform the room color setting and the interview, including conducting a presentation to get more accurate results, because the use of photo editing in this study to create a color effect using a projected image may limit the experience of authenticity.
Furthermore, an extension of scope testing from mood and color association to productivity and job satisfaction influenced by office color interior of Thai workers should be considered for the future Thai workplace improvement research topic.
