Blue Background is Best for Creative Thinking — Dave’s Diary

Around the radio station group I’m known as the “creative guy”.  That just means I have an overactive imagination and a big mouth!  I enjoy the reputation and I like the challenge of coming up with the creative solutions.  But it’s not always easy.  If only there was something that could, on occasion, boost my creativity!Ahem. A study from the University of British Columbia concludes that the best color to boost our ability to think creatively is blue. In addition, it found that red is the most effective at enhancing our attention to detail, findings that could have major implications for advertising and interior design.

In the study, red boosted performance on detail-oriented tasks such as memory retrieval and proofreading by as much as 31% compared to blue. For creative tasks such as brainstorming, blue environmental cues prompted participants to produce twice as many creative outputs as when under the red color condition.

I hope the boss doesn’t mind. She painted her office yellow to be “cheery”. I think blue is a better idea!