Applewood – colour in the community
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Last week I had the opportunity to visit a recently completed project that I worked on last summer. Applewood is a respite care facility built in the community in Tadworth, Surrey by Surrey County Council for children and young people with disabilities aged 5-18 years. Accompanying me was Susannah Mathieson, National Account Services Manager for Dulux who was interested to see how I had used colour on this project.
When working with colour psychology the key to selecting a palette of colours is to identify the ‘colour personality’ of the environment. What is it used for – who will be using the space and how? A family of colours is then selected accordingly that best captures, expresses and supports the required qualities of the environment. The brief from Pat Williams, manager of Applewood was to create a bright, lively, fun and ‘funky’ living accommodation that would inspire the young guests who will be able to stay at the facility for between 2 and 6 nights
To convey these qualities and the feel that Applewood wanted to create I specified colours that had warm, clear and bright characteristics. The ‘personality’ of this family of fresh spring colours captures perfectly the qualities of youth, vitality, energy, creativity, activity, motivation and fun! It also identifies particularly well with professions, institutions or businesses linked with children and ‘youth’.
I then looked at the individual colours to select the ones which would best support an activity or create an ambience within each particular room. For example in the recreation rooms where the youngsters would be perhaps socialising and conducting activities I specified yellow to encourage optimism and confidence. Other colours I specified for the Applewood palette were green, turquoise, purple, orange and blue. Each of these colours selected contribute to an upbeat and engaging environment both for the young people staying at Applwood and for the staff working there.
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