According to research done at the University of British Columbia, the color of your environment affects your thought process.

red makes us more cautious and attentive to details, while blue makes us more creative and receptive to new ideas

The researchers suggest that the results of this study can be useful for marketers. In online advertising, for example, background colors of your web page could affect the way consumers react to your product offerings.

In one test, people responded to advertising copy for two fictional brands of toothpaste. The first brand was promoted as a way to avoid risk by preventing cavities. The second emphasized the promise of whiter teeth.

People taking the test read the advertising copy against a background that was either red, blue or white.

… significantly more people choose the brand which was good on cavity prevention. With blue… they preferred teeth whitening. And on a white background, neither product had an advantage.

Don’t go and convert all your webpages to red and blue yet. These are just the results of one experiment. They haven’t yet figured out how to use these findings in the real-world yet.