Colour is a major component of the so called positive psychology like: music, friends and family network, green and open spaces, pets (cats and dogs mainly), sport, good food. So, in healthcare environment must be a hot topic for promotion of wellbeing.

In therms of healthcare, color can reduce spatial disorientation, effect of interior color on patients’ emotional and cognitive appraisal and perceived service quality, and blue walls (as compared to white walls) reduce anxiety and increase cognitive and affective appraisal and even perceived service quality

Interesting question.  I work in Community Corrections, which is supposed to be rehabilitative but the culture still stinks of corrections. It's a horrible gray color inside and hasn't been painted in decades. What color do you think would be soothing and also more egalitarian?

Dr. Parcells recommends several guidelines for applying color appropriately in the home environment. Her color suggestions include the following:

a) Black is the absence of color and as such, lowers energy. A long road trip in a car with black upholstery virtually guarantees that the people inside the car will feel exhausted after an hour or more of driving. Wearing black clothing reduces body energy and metabolism and hence is not the slimming effect that overweight individuals desire. Better to wear colors that stimulate metabolism like yellow, magenta, violet or red.

b) Soft pinks, blues and other pastel shades are most restful and good for the bedroom environment. Wild colors and patterns in the bedroom will affect the sleep, relaxation and even memory. While falling asleep may still occur in a room with unrestful colors or patterns, full relaxation will not fully occur throughout the night. The color of the sheets and pillowcases is most important to keep within the neutral/pastel color scheme.

c) White is always an acceptable color particularly in the kitchen when combined with full spectrum lighting. Dr. Parcells also recommends pastels to compliment the creative energy of the cooking environment.

d) Yellow may be a good color choice for a bathroom as it is energizing and conducive to stimulating the intestinal tract and perhaps even alleviating constipation.

e) Orange may prove a great color for workout gear as it appears to stimulate oxygenization and normalizes metabolism.

f) Indigo (blue and violet) are wonderful colors for the bedroom where the person sleeping there suffers from insomnia.

g) Red is not a good color to use in children’s rooms as it is too stimulating. Even red drapes or other accessories can disrupt sleeping patterns and make it difficult to settle children down at night for bed. Dr. Parcells had great success normalizing children’s sleeping habits when the colors of the bedroom were changed to calming pastels.

I once again appreciate you for reminding us so many ways other than medicine for better mental and overall physical well being

See a TED Talk about the use of colur in the report of laboratory values for patients by Thomas Goetz, Jan 2011  

A intersting study about Learning difficulties arising from colour defective vision

Learning difficulties arising from colour defective vision: a practical example

A question in which colour defective vision could imply incomplete or wrong answers

was made in the test on Geography carried out in Andalusian universities (June 2004).Thus, we have dealt with the analysis of colour discrimination through a set of instrumental colomeasures and similar experimental conditions to those present in the implementation of the abovementioned test. Our findings come to prove that there is not discernment difficulty in those individuals with normal colour vision whereas there are problems in the case of people with protan defects (about 2% of population) and specially in the case of people with deutan defects (approximately 6% of population). In the worse case, the influence of such difficulties on the final mark of the test would mean 3 points less out of 10. Finally, and taking into account the outcomes achieved in this study, we present a line of argument on the influence of colour defective vision in the different educational stages and tasks.

http://www.revistaeducacion.mec.es/re340/re340_26.pdf

Thank you so much for those informative documents Theophanes E. Raptis. Have careful read and downloaded some of them so far. Thanks.

Very interesting question, I think color for medical health should white and bright green. This is my personal opinion.

I could not agree with you more Rui Tato Marinho about the crucial  role of colour in our life. Therefore I also believe it is absolutely worth to be paid well attention when designing a building. Colour  either effect our psychology in a positive or negative ways. Having the right colour for the right space are the challenge for majority of designers as it is most cases combined with lights and its intensity. 

In my field (Liver diseases/Hepatology) how it would be the reactions if blood instead of red was white and if jaundice instead of yellow was red? The reactions and the emotions would be tremendous different!!!

Thank you so much Rui Tato Marinho for you prompt respond. To be perfectly honest I have not experienced that much about people psychology effected by colour. All I have studied so far are some basic positive and negative reacts of people about colour in architectural  spaces. So all your information provided so far is crucial. Many thanks again Rui Tato Marinho.

Color is certainly important in public buildings to improve mood. Even more valuable would be reducing the incidence of loud noises. And even more valuable than that would be reducing the stress of the workers in those buildings, because stress communicates itself through lack of kindness and compassion. Overworked workers cannot help being stressed. Therefore, hiring sufficient numbers of workers for each shift and giving them recognition and a pleasant working environment is far more important than choosing color schemes for the walls. Let your vision be global.

Thank you so much for your great explanation Hengky S H. I agree with you colour effect us in numerous ways as you have mentioned: the decrease of spatial disorientation, right colour may improve patient' emotional and  so on. 

         Your question is in deed a significant and a very relative issue associated with a confluence of factors. Color is essential to enable the therapeutic building suggestive to the process of healing the mind. Although, each indiviudal in treatment is different, in terms of the presenting symptoms, the likelihood of similarities are inclined with  a suggestive index which values individual preferences to be considered, and rated for a collective understanding of choices to be ranked according to the category of the diagnoistic criteria.

          Additionally, the active process of viewing the needs of particular individuals in treatment, creates greater possibilities with understanding the nature of the effect of  certain colors on emotional response to the dimensions of the mind in control of the decision to value the progress of an indiviudal creative senses of orientation as affected by, postive or negative responses. For the most part, we are aware that soothing colors are able to evoke positive mindfulness, and, enables the creative capacities to sustain adavace adaptive therapeutic inclinations to develp a closer understanding as to the significance of color scheme which enhances environmental friendliness, and most certainly allows for feelings of positive emotional adjustment to change in personality. 

         Most importantly, the rehabilitative value of designs, along with the effective use of color, permits the quality of linking the psychological value with the affect of emotional preparedness to the conditon of creating thoughfulness, tolerance which fortifies dynamic forms of renewed strength and energetic feeling of hope.

Thank  you so much for you participation and the interesting question Sarvenaz Moshfegh Asiedu. As design and psychology are the fantastic and challenging fields, I am afraid I can have the direct answer for that question with those info provided when just being a beginner  in the field. However, accoding to Dr. Parcells suggestions (Jeremiah Odhek Masime's answer above):

-Black is the absence of color and as such, lowers energy

-Soft pinks, blues and other pastel shades are most restful and good for the bedroom environment.

-White is always an acceptable color particularly in the kitchen when combined with full spectrum lighting.

-Yellow may be a good color choice for a bathroom as it is energizing and conducive to stimulating the intestinal tract and perhaps even alleviating constipation.

-Orange may prove a great color for workout gear as it appears to stimulate oxygenization and normalizes metabolism.

- Indigo (blue and violet) are wonderful colors for the bedroom where the person sleeping there suffers from insomnia.

-Red is not a good color to use in children’s rooms as it is too stimulating.

Thank you so much for your contribution Jeremiah Odhek Masime. Info provided above is crucial to me as it is useful for my research. Many thanks again. 

Thank you so much Jakub Bil for your great explanation as well as the interesting attached file. I totally agree with you the question is quite complicated as it has mentioned variety issues. Colour in design has been a concerned topic because its importances. Many thanks again for your participation.

Thanks for sharing the study Pilar Martin-Lobo. That is great help for my research on this complicated topic. 

Thanks for your suggestion Krzysztof Korbel. It seems to be a good idea to utilising white and blue in healthcare environment. 

Your explanation is  interesting to me David and I agree with you about insufficient number of workers and "lack of  kindness and compassion" may lead to stress but my question as well as my focusing are not really about those issues. I incline to figure out how colour in healthcare environment effects to patient's treatment processes. Thank you for the participation and interesting ideas David.

Thanks you so much Desmond A Assent for the informative information. I agree that in general most of us believe "soothing colours are able to evoke positive mindfulness" in majority of cases as well as colour scheme also enhances environmental friendliness, or even feelings, emotional of people. Many thanks again.

Hi Lona - I am also an Eastern medical practitioner ..from this perspective all manifestation arises from the elements, for instance in Chinese and Tibetan medicine these are- fire, earth, metal, water and wood, each element is associated with a color. Relationally each organ in the body is associated with one of these element  and it's color, and each color/element  is associated significantly with a correlating emotion. Someones emotional affect can reflect both their constitutional disposition and or their emotional/physical imbalance ... therefor there are universal attributes to different colors in nature , but also possibilities based on the individuals imbalance or personal disposition. if you research Chinese medicine and color, or color and feng shui, this may also offer another perspective.

We see the world around us through colors. Whenever there is light there is color, and therefore we see the surfaces that (in)form visual space perception. More than 85% or 90% of all information that arrives to our brain from the exterior comes from the sense of sight. So, light and color are, together, the main keys for our communication with the world, and the way the world communicate with us. 

I do not agree with some color palettes that are being used, leading to the 70´s and 80's approach of having a color for each floor, etc. Color should respond to functional an aesthetic issues, promoting at same time comfort for the patients and adequate professional care. If we have the same concerns in two or more floors we should address them in the same way. A waiting area should be designed in a balanced harmony between hot and cold colors, nor having to be blue just because you are in the "blue" floor!

Thanks for the great contribution Ann. That is interesting when you have mentioned about both constitutional disposition and emotional/physical imbalance. I also believe that although it may be slightly different about level of impacts by colour from place to place, the effect of colour on human being/ patients are existent.

Thank you for the informative response João. That is great as you emphasise we see the world by colour. I agree with you that "light and color are, together, the main keys for our communication with the world, and the way the world communicate with us". I also agree that all colour can be used in designing. However I believe as the question inclines about healthcare environment and majority of patients need to rest/relax..., some of colour may be the ideal for the spaces.

Hi Lona,

There are a couple of interesting areas that might be interesting for your research on colors, emotions and perfomance:

Russell A. Hill and Robert A. Barton Nature 435, 293 (19 May 2005), Red enhances human performance in contests. They showed that wearing red clothes increases the likelihood of winning combats in Olympic Games fighters (judo, boxing, etc.)

Metha & Zhu (2009) Science 27, found that red and blue backgrounds on computer screens do significantly improve perfomance on attentional tasks and creative tasks respectively.

Thus, colors may affect in interesting, and complicated ways, our performance and, for instance, judgments of attractiveness (see Elliot & Niesta (2008). JPSP, 95, 1150–1164).

To end, it is also known, to make things even more complex, that the color of placebo pills have different effects on those who take them (e.g., red placebo pills are more effective than white ones to reduce pain).

Good luck with your project!

Thanks you so much for the interesting information and suggestions Carmelo. Such a great help as you have pointed out the impacts of  color on various fields to people performances. Many thanks again.

I think the color impress any body feeling, and it develop visual perception which influence by their feeling.

Light and soft color would develop peace situation, while a bright color develop cheerfulness feeling. 

Dear Rui Tato Marinho, do you have an url for the TED talk you mention? I can't find it. Tnx

Here's an introduction to color and autism: http://goo.gl/uN62Ar

As in other cases, one can learn about normal responses by studying special populations. A paradoxical finding around autism and color which might be generalized is probably that color-perception is idiosyncratic on the one hand and impacts most people in similar ways on the other.