Inhibition or Return (IOR) describes the phenomenon of responding more slowly to a stimulus that appears at the same location as a recently presented cue or target relative to an appearance at other locations. IOR has been widely researched and is still subject to many studies in which “return” especially means to return to the location. However, there are also some studies reporting non-spatial IOR effects, which are based on repeating or changing non-spatial features like colour or shape. While spatial IOR emerges in many designs, it is not clear which conditions must be fulfilled to generate non-spatial IOR. Based on previous findings we hypothesized that slower responses lead to the emergence of a colour-based inhibition effect. In the current task, participants signaled the detection of a target, that was preceded by a cue with the same or a different location and/or colour. We introduced several inter-stimulus-intervals and cue durations to provoke overall slower responding. The analysis revealed faster responding for trials with the colour changing from cue to target, specifically emerging at location repetitions. In addition, this effect was positively correlated with mean reaction times and a percentile analysis showed that the effect emerged at late responses, supporting the idea that slowed responding can lead to the emergence of non-spatial IOR, even in simple cue-target designs. These findings suggest that researchers aiming to find modulations by non-spatial features in attentional orienting paradigms should develop designs that stimulate late responding.