How do you feel about the colour of your office walls and carpet? Are some colleagues' offices more inviting than others? And your meeting rooms – are they dreary, or bright and stimulating? We choose our home decor with great care, and intuitively understand how we react to colours there, so why should it be different at work?

Corus Hotels recently researched how people feel about meeting rooms where they need to brainstorm. More than half the respondents said that dreary and oppressive workplaces and bland, depressing meeting rooms were just no good. They inhibit creative thought and lead to lacklustre meetings. As a result Corus Hotels' Bristol premises now features the Think Tank meeting room decorated in refreshing and revitalising shades of orange.

Sara Jane Osborne, design director at interior design company Claremont Group Interiors, understands the thinking behind this. She says colours affect us in different ways. "Colour and light have an evocative effect. So for instance naturally occurring colours like the greens of the outside world will be associated with memories of the outdoors. Red spells danger – red traffic lights, blood, fire – it spurs you to action, it energises. So it's useful in places where it will inject dynamism. Purple is a meditative or spiritual colour and is used by churches. Yellow has optimistic associations. Blue speaks of sea, sky, tranquillity, rest, hydrotherapy."

Colours for pick-me-ups

So how does this translate in the office? It depends what sort of work you're doing. Touches of red will be good for sales and marketing offices and meeting rooms where people need to come up with great ideas. Yellow and green should brighten everyone up and put them in the mood for work. Purple could be depressing. And blue, although pleasant and restful might send you to sleep!

Do designers and decision makers understand how colours affect people? Many don't, with the result that people are unhappy in the office without quite realising why. Osborne sees a lot of what she calls tonal exercises – palettes of passive, neutral colours. She says they were called in to advise on a meeting room which staff said was oppressive. "All the colours were on the cooler side of the spectrum – grey, beige, cool lilac – and people didn't use it if they could avoid it. We changed it by injecting small quantities of yellows, reds, warm lilacs."

Some interior designers revel in a riotous display of primary splash. Office staff are visually assaulted by all these competing colours and go home tired and headachy at the end of each day. Other designers choose colours that are currently fashionable. This might be great at first but who wants to work in an area that looks like an 'Ideal Home' exhibition from five years back? If fashion splashes are to be used, then they should be limited to paintwork which can easily be replaced, rather than big-ticket items like carpets and acoustic screens.

Colour crises!

John Brewster, CEO at Genus Interiors, says many managers don't realise the office is very different from the home. His company developed a design for a client where the managing director insisted on a carpet the same bright red shade as the one in his study at home. But the effect was overpowering in his large office, and it reflected off the glass partitioning along the corridor affecting the open plan office outside.

Corporate colours might be another mistake. Chosen to reinforce company loyalty, they're not necessarily going to induce the right mood. Osborne at Claremont worked for a client whose offices and staff restaurant were decorated in corporate blue and grey. Grey desks and blue office chairs; grey café tables and blue café chairs; all surrounded by artwork of company products. A depressing prospect! "We increased the differential by injecting a feel of the outside," she says. "Naturally occurring colours like lime green and yellows and oranges and reds. And we commissioned photographs evocative of the outside world – of grass, trees, sky, weather." Result – a more cheerful environment and happier staff.

If you're looking round the office now and finding the colours less than ideal, then have a word with the boss. Everyone will thank you for it.