New Design Ideas

ISSN Print: 2522-4875

ISSN Online: 2524-2148

The Journal New Design Ideas is a peer-reviewed, open-access on-line & print journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, including industrial design, visual communication design, interface design, animation and game design, architectural design, urban design, and other design related fields. It aims to provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas and findings from researchers across different cultures. We aim to be a channel for the knowledge exchange between academia and industry by identifing the results are of interest or applicable to practical design.

Submission Current Issue Archive Special Issues

The Influence of Muted and Vibrant Colours on Productivity in Coworking Spaces

Published: 02-04-2026

https://doi.org/10.62476/ndi.101233

Abstract

Colour is a critical environmental stimulus influencing the productivity of users in a coworking space. This study investigates to explore the effects of using light-muted, dark-muted and vibrant colours on the creative productivity of Generation Z users (born between 1995 and 2015) in coworking spaces. While user preferences tend to favour light-muted walls and tend to avoid vibrant hues, such as red, yellow and green, experimental finsings with 21 purposively selected respondents in a virtual coworking space showed that dark-muted colours were more conducive to productivity. This was evidenced by a higher number of ideas generated in modified Wartegg and Finke creativity tasks and further supported by Associative Conceptual Network Analysis (ACNA) of verbal protocols, which revealed greater conceptual depth. Psychological responses related to focus, mood and comfort also found to mediate these effects. Overall, a dark-muted colours appear to optimally support productive behaviour in coworking spaces.