Colour

The choices that you make about colour are more important than you imagine. Often colour choices are made from a subjective point of view, with no reference to the market you are trying to reach. But because colour is energy, it affects our mood and influences our behaviour.

Angela Wright is a colour psychologist and she used to run a hotel. She realised that given a choice of two bedrooms that were identical in every way except the colour scheme regular guests would prefer one to the other. They were never able to explain their reasons except to say that they felt better when they were in a particular room. We underestimate the psychological impact of colour to our peril.

Research shows that people make subconscious judgements about people and products within 90 seconds of initial viewing. Between 60 per cent and 90 per cent of that judgement is based on colour alone. Over 90 per cent of consumers say they place most importance on visual factors (colour and shape) when purchasing a product, compared to only 6 per cent who say that the feel of the product is most important. For instance just a glimpse of the Coca-Cola bottle or its distinctive red is enough for us to recognise exactly what it is.

There are only eleven basic colour words in the English language and these colours have fundamental properties. For instance:

Red is a strong physical colour, lively and friendly, but can be seen as demanding and aggressive. It can make things appear nearer than they really are, so it grabs our attention.

Blue affects us mentally. Strong blues stimulate clear thought. It can appear to be cold, unemotional and unfriendly.

Yellow relates to the emotions, is the colour of confidence and optimism and lifts our spirits. The wrong tone can cause fear and anxiety.

Green is the colour of balance between body, mind and emotions and gives reassurance. It can be seen as too bland and indicate stagnation.

Angela Wright says of her hotel days, ‘We quickly learned how to use colour. Blue never works in a restaurant. A little bit of red in the bar worked well. Green seemed to work pretty much anywhere. Too much yellow in a bedroom and you’d have bad-tempered guests.’

In looking at how colour is used in print or decoration it is not enough to just refer to blue or red, since there is no such thing as a universally attractive colour. It is the variations in each colour that are important since two variations of the same colour can have completely different effects. Our response is not to one colour but to colours in combination.

Angela Wright has developed the Colour Affects System ( www.colour-affects.co.uk ), which in summary seeks to describe four tonal families of colour. Each group contains variations of all the spectral hues, so for any colour scheme that you want to use in your hotel, whether in the literature or the furnishings, you only need to use one group. As you will see in the description above of the four primary colours, each colour has both negative and positive properties. Which of these are communicated depends entirely on how it is used.

Typography

It is not possible to have a coherent image for your hotel unless your use of typography has a unique personality. Although it seems a simple issue of ‘just choosing a typeface’, there are so many options for getting it wrong (font, size, alignment, spacing, shape, paragraphs etc) that you will soon recognise a page layout for a letter or a website that has been set up by an expert.

You need to choose a serif (like the main text in this book) or sans serif (like that used in the headings) typeface or a combination of both and then make a selection based on the various sizes, weights and widths of the letters. You don’t need to pay to have all your literature and signage set by a graphic designer each time. Far better to have a sample design template to use as a standard and then make sure that this is followed each time you produce a piece of print. The vital aspects of effective use of type are clarity and legibility.