The Psychological and Physiological Effects of Light and Colour on Space Users

Abstract

The impact of colour and light conditions on our emotional and physical health and wellbeing is gaining greater importance in our urban societies. While large resources are allocated for well designed buildings with the right choice of colour and lighting conditions, there are little scientific evidence that supports these choices. The aim of this research was to determine the impact of different colours and lighting conditions on people, using non-invasive means. Close correlations between cardiac activity, our emotions and health are well reported in literature and hence it is expected to be a good measure of environmental conditions on people. Electrocardiogram (ECG) is the non-invasive recording of the cardiac activity. Thus, this paper reports experimental research conducted where changes in ECG were measured when the participants were exposed to different colour and light conditions. The results of these experiments show that there is a change in heart rate (HR) due to change in colour and lighting conditions.

The influence of color on student emotion, heart rate, and performance in learning environments

“…Color also has an influence on human physiology, such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and vision . Abbas, Kumar and Mclahlan have also studied the impact of color and light on physiological states. The results of this study showed significant changes in heart rate after 2‐min exposures to different colored lights with various intensities.…”

Wireless smart environment in Ambient Assisted Living for people that suffer from cognitive disabilities

“…In 2005 Nadeen Abbas [10] reported that light intensity and colour changes our Heart rate and the influence of this stimulus is subject dependent. This research was conducted by exposing subjects to different colours and light conditions during 110 minutes, but only recorded the last 2 minutes.…”

Interior Environmental Design for a Leisure Learning Area in the National Gallery of Thailand

“…Colour light: Abbas (2006) presented a summary of human's perceptions of color lights. Below are some examples of these.…”

“…Our conceptual framework is based on the following: perceptible environmental elements in the atmosphere (space, furniture, equipment, lights, and air) in the idea of Zumthor (2006), Pallasmaa (2014), and Mahmoud (2017); the theory of perceived stimuli in the environment of Russell (1980); positive environmental elements by using various colours and shapes reported by Wright (2018) and Wang & Zhang (2016); positive feelings evoked by color lights in a study by Abbas (2006); positive feelings evoked by background music in the atmosphere, an idea of Herrmann (2009); human, physical, and external factors derived from the concept of finding evidence for design programming of Palmer (1981); combining all environmental elements according to functionality and aesthetics expounded by Rengel (2016); and the concepts of the 5 aspects of a place mentioned above set forth by Craik (1971). The design and development of the interior environment of a leisure learning area in the National Gallery of Thailand was done in 2 steps: design and assessment of the design.…”