Original GPO Phone Colours

[maxmix]

Hi Guys,

Can anyone shed any light as to why the GPO back in the day decided to choose the following colours for their phones --

706  Ivory, Grey, Black, Blue, Red, Yellow, Green
746  Ivory, Grey, Black, Blue, Red, Yellow, Green
711/741 Ivory, Grey, Black, Red (711 only)

And so on. Any help, as ever gratefully received

[twocvbloke]

I'd guess because they had several meetings with the manufacturers, product testers and used surveys to find out what colours would be preferred in the home, business and whatnot...

The colours that preceded them on the bakelite phones were Black, Ivory, Red and Green, so I guess they just carried on those colours, but then added a couple more, namely 2-tone Grey, Concord Blue and latterly Chocolate brown, all I can think of is they chose them because that's what everyone else was doing, so they didn't seem left out...

[Owain]

Black matched existing bakelite phones. Remember that for a while the intention was to use the new Handset and Transmitter with the old 300 series bases.

Ivory was already well established in the bakelite era and probably thought popular for domestic phones.

Two-tone grey probably co-ordinated well with grey and brown office furniture at the time.

The red wallphone is comparatively rare and probably most used as an 'emergency' phone.

Chocolate brown was a New Exciting Colour for the 1980s Yeoman phone (re)launched to coordinate with the Ambassador range and Herald/Monarch switchboards.