Colour and warmth: why maroon and orange feel like Teapot

Walk into a typical office and you can guess the colours before you open the door: grey, white, a little blue. Sensible colours. Safe colours. The colours of a form you have to fill in.

We wanted something different.

Why warm colours?

Think about the colours of the things that comfort you. A glass of chai. A cotton saree on a drying line. The inside of an old notebook. A temple lamp in the evening. They tend to be warm: deep reds, soft oranges, creamy yellows.

That is where the Teapot look comes from. Maroon is the colour of something steeped for a long time. Orange is the spark, the small bit of mischief. Cream is the page, the empty space where your ideas go.

Grey tells you to be efficient. Maroon and orange tell you to be at home, and then get on with it.

The lab bench look

Alongside the colours, there is a certain scientist’s-workbench feeling: graph paper grids, sticky notes in the corners, a bit of handwriting here and there. The idea is that the place is for making things, trying things, and crossing out what did not work.

A workbench is not a showroom. It is a place where it is fine to be a little untidy while you think. That is a good feeling for anyone who builds software, writes, designs or runs a small company.

We built it for laid-back tech people, the sort who would rather have a good idea than a good tie.

Using colour at your own desk

You do not need a whole building to try this. A few ideas:

Add one warm thing. A mug, a notebook, a cushion. One strong colour near your workspace is enough to change its personality.

Keep a pad of sticky notes handy. Write the one task that matters today and stick it where you can see it. It is oddly satisfying to tear it off at the end.

Let your screen be calm. The busy colours belong around the desk, not on the thing you stare at.

Choose colours you like, not colours you think are professional. You are the one sitting there.

A space that feels like itself

Colour does not make a workspace good by itself. Fast Wi-Fi, power backup, air conditioning and a secure, well-looked-after building do the heavy lifting. But colour is what makes it a place you want to walk into on a Monday.

If you would like to see the Teapot look in person, have a look at the office space in Trichy and come say hello.