Colour In Your Business Is Your Business! by Thelma van der Werff

We are all surrounded by colour, in nature, home, wardrobe, office, clinic or salon, but are unaware of the profound effect colour has on our emotions, taking for granted the thought patterns and attitudes that are processed through our daily intake of colour.

Marketing knows the impact colour has on each of us and uses colour as an effective tool to influence you to buy products, eat or drink food or choose one location over another location.

If you have a clinic, salon, shop or office it is obvious that the colours you choose to surround yourself with are making a statement about you, your business and your service.

I have noticed in the last couple of years that there is a growing trend for hairdressers, beauty clinics, salons, restaurants and corporate offices to introduce uniforms to achieve a more professional look. Unfortunately, however, the most popular colour choice for uniforms is the colour BLACK. Black is chosen because it is associated with strength, power, sophistication, elegance, expensive presence and style and perceived as an ‘easy’ colour to wear; shows no stains, it is slimming and suits everyone. Wrong!

Why ‘unfortunately’ and ‘wrong’? Each colour has properties that influence your emotions and thought patterns and as with everything in life we need to create a balance. Balancing colour is no different to creating a balanced diet. For instance, if you singularly only eat tomatoes every day, although tomatoes are very healthy, you will be lacking the benefits of other fruit and vegetables thus giving yourself a very unbalanced diet. Wearing one colour every single day has the same effect on you. Colour is like a nutrient and you need a balance of all colours to benefit from the properties of each colour.

Wearing black every single day is like covering up, not allowing any light to enter the cells of your body. By blocking this life force you can hinder your emotional development and not be able to live up to your full potential. Think of your garden, if you do not want any weeds to grow, you cover the soil with a weed mat; the weed mat is black and does not allow any light through thus blocking the growth of the weed.

When I go to the hairdresser I see all these lovely young women wearing black. They tell me that they wear black because it does not show any stains or hairs, but in reality, the opposite is true. Nor do these same women appreciate how wearing black continuously can ‘drag’ them down. I recently travelled to Europe and visited a hair salon and was most pleasantly surprised. All the staff were wearing patterned, brightly coloured shirts. Their uniforms were changed each day and incorporated five different colour selections. The clever choice of using patterned, brightly coloured shirts created two bonuses, one they masked any stains and hairs and secondly the staff felt uplifted and happy wearing them.

Another misconception for wearing black is because it is deemed to be slimming. Although black does give the message of elegance and sophistication, black will always appear to be more dense than other colours. A black car or motorcycle will give a more solid and powerful impression. Put two objects next to each other, one black and one white and see for yourself which one looks the more substantial.

Black is perceived as commanding strength and power and as such is often used as a corporate colour. However, in the beauty and wellness industry the message you want to communicate and create is caring, nurturing, soothing and peaceful. The colour black is definitely not the colour to communicate these messages. Black can also create a subconscious barrier and can become an ‘unapproachable’ colour because of its strong, solid properties and appearance.

As a colour coach I have had clients who became emotionally and physically ill after wearing a black uniform over a long period of time. One client had 2 uniforms; black for winter and orange for summer. She noticed that, not only did wearing the orange uniform lift her spirits and make her feel happier than the black uniform, but additionally, customers reacted more positively towards her whilst wearing orange.

If you want to use a uniform in your beauty clinic, hair salon or office be aware that behind every colour is a message and emotion. What message would you like to communicate? I have written a colour dictionary ‘Dress to Impress’ which can be used as a colour guide to clarify the emotions behind each colour and will help you understand the message individual colours communicate.

Copyright 2009 Thelma van der Werff. Thelma trains colour coaches in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The training course is especially suitable for practitioners of the wellness, coaching and beauty industry, covering what colour is, the effects of colour, how to practise colour coaching and how to implement this service in your practice.
Health and Goodness readers are offered a 10% discount. For more information visit www.colourcomfort.com