You put a lot of thought into room sets and menus, but don't forget the power of color when it comes to enhancing your attendees' experience. Read this article in this morning's Boston Globe about color trends, and found a few nuggets planners might want to think about:
- The idea of paint colors changing one's mood and affecting brain function has been proven scientifically. In a study published last month in the journal Science, researchers at the University of British Columbia found that rooms painted red helped the performance of test subjects on detail-oriented tasks, while blue enhanced the performance of subjects with creative tasks.
A 2006 study, conducted by interior designers and color researchers, found that wall color affected the amount of food and drink that subjects consumed in a cocktail party setting. The study - which divided subjects into blue, yellow, and red rooms - found that those in yellow and red rooms gestured, fidgeted, and circulated more, while those in the blue room were more still.
People preferred the yellow room to the blue room by a ratio of 2 to 1, but tended to leave it more quickly than the blue room. The study also found that those in the yellow room ate twice as much as subjects in the other rooms.
One group that is definitely up on this trend, not to mention holds some of the best-designed meetings I've ever written about, is the Color Marketing Group.