It seems most hospitals have that particular shade of light ‘hospital green’ or blue. Is there are a medical or scientific reason these colours are chosen?
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Look at something red for a while, e.g. a red cup or a red plate, or a bright red circle on your phone (after a google image search). Afterwards, look at a pure white paper. If you looked at the red object for long enough, you’ll now see a green blob in the shape of the red object on the white paper, a kind of after-image. The shape is green, because that’s the complementary color to red (which is related to the three types of color cones in our eyes, but I won’t go too deep into that now).
Now imagine that a surgeon has been staring intently at a blood-red part of the patient’s body while operating and that everyone was wearing white clothes. The moment the surgeon looks towards any of the white clothes, they’ll start seeing green patches everywhere, which is very annoying at best and disorienting at worst. When everyone is wearing green clothes, this effect is not noticeable any more, since the clothes are just as green as the after-image. This is why ‘hospital green’ is chosen in operating rooms or other contexts where doctors routinely deal with red, open wounds.
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