Why work in an office when you can work in a rainforest? Well, sort of.

In a previous life, I was a radio announcer. I spent my entire twenties working at four different stations and they were exciting, thrilling and challenging years. I learned the art of ad lib, interviewed the biggest stars in the world and talked for a living.

I was in heaven. Except it didn’t look like heaven.

In radio, your station logo is everything. The top marketing and advertising companies are hired to design, then redesign your station logo and before you know it you have new signage, repainted vehicles, reissued business cards and some rather unfortunate colour schemes on your office walls.

If it’s not bad enough that inside the actual on air studio you are often staring at publicity photos of yourself, you might also find yourself confronted by a rather loud colour scheme that perfectly matches your new station logo, which perfectly matches the promo t-shirt you are wearing and, oh look! The local bakery has sent donuts with icing the exact same shade of ‘insert strange colour here’. And you’re eating them because radio is a hungry business.

During my radio years I was physically assaulted with the following colour schemes:

• Bright yellow
• Bright orange
• Dark blue
• Maroon

Did you know that colours can affect your mood? Here’s how my mood was affected by each of these carefully chosen colour schemes…hyper, hyper, strangely calm and tired.

Yep, the radio station with maroon walls actually left its staff feeling quite tired and a little down. Thankfully I only visited the station with the maroon walls because if I did have to work there full time, it would have been quite a challenge.

I then left the workforce and radio to have one, two and then three children. By the time I returned to work, albeit in a different industry, I was incredibly relieved that work places seemed to have woken up to a few facts:

1. Workers don’t like to be slapped across the face with bright colours.

2. Workers like to be able to see the outside world, not feel like their office is an underground colony on Mars.

3. Workers like to see greenery, the more the better, and preferably breathe fresh air.

4. Neutral colours are best because then you can just be yourself, instead of the mood that is being dictated to you by the odd choice of colour on the walls.

Only one of the stations I worked at had plants. Sure, they were gigantic retro ferns in every available corner, but it was still nice to see them there. Plants give you fresh air and something lovely to look at. Plants remind you that you are still part of planet Earth, no matter how crazy your work hours are.

Today, office plants have taken on a whole new life. Interesting and intriguing varieties are used and they are displayed so cleverly, in small, cool baskets lined up on the wall or in other interesting ways.

These days I always find myself starring at plants when I am trying to think of what to write. And by the way, my optometrist who I saw recently because I seem to be losing my long-range vision, suggested that every few minutes I look away from my computer screen and focus on a single leaf on a plant.

How progressive is my work place that they are ensuring I have my choice of leaves with which to improve my eye sight?

So if your office is a little vibrant or a little stale, drop some neutral colour samples on your boss’ desk and weigh it down with a cool cactus.

Hopefully they get the hint.

What do you do to make your workplace feel more vibrant and homey?

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