Spa Executive June 2021

Color may impact emotions and
even behavior. Here’s how to use
color in your spa to enhance your
guest experience.
HOW TO USE COLOR
IN YOUR SPA TO ENHANCE
YOUR GUEST EXPERIENCE
Just like the music and sounds guests experience
in your spa or wellness business environment,
color may have a dramatic impact on mood and
emotion, and even influence customer behavior.
Studies have found that green may increase
concentration and task accuracy and also that
workers in white and predominantly blue-green
offices reported higher perceived job performance
and satisfaction than those in predominantly
red offices.
Red, meanwhile, has been correlated with impaired
performance on achievement of certain tasks,
which researchers suggested is because red is
associated with the danger of failure and evokes
avoidance motivation. However, with sports, red
outfits have been associated with an advantage
over blue outfits.
This doesn’t mean that effects of color are
universal. Multiple factors may influence how a
person feels when exposed to a certain color, such
as cultural or personal association. As pointed out
here by Cameron Chapman, author of the book
Colour for Web Design, “If a person’s favorite stuffed
animal as a child was blue, for example, then they
may have a preference for blue throughout their
life. Or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, if
they were hit by a blue car as a child, they might
have a strong negative emotional reaction to the
color blue.”
There are, however, universal human experiences
that allow us to guess how people are going to
react to some colors. Green and blue, for example,
are associated with nature and calm, like plants,
grass, forests, the sky, and water.
Chapman also notes the following associations:
June 2021 Issue • p. 3