Color has a large impact on our psychological and physiological responses. This study examines the value of color as a component in a healing environment for pediatric patient rooms by measuring color preferences among healthy children, pediatric patients, and design professionals. Environmental satisfaction is a significant mediator between the physical environment and children’s health. Previous color preference studies have typically been done with small color chips or papers, which are very different from seeing a color applied on wall surfaces. A simulation method allowed for investigating the value of color in real contexts and controlling confounding variables. The findings of this study demonstrated that blue and green are the most preferred, and white the least preferred color, by both children and design professionals. Children’s gender differences were found in that boys prefer red and purple less than girls. Pediatric patients reported lower preference scores for yellow than did healthy children. These findings lead to color application guidelines for designers to understand color more and eventually to create better environments for children and their families.

Color has a large impact on our psychological and physiological responses. This study examines the value of color as a component in a healing environment for pediatric patient rooms by measuring color preferences among healthy children, pediatric patients, and design professionals. Environmental satisfaction is a significant mediator between the physical environment and children’s health. Previous color preference studies have typically been done with small color chips or papers, which are very different from seeing a color applied on wall surfaces. A simulation method allowed for investigating the value of color in real contexts and controlling confounding variables. The findings of this study demonstrated that blue and green are the most preferred, and white the least preferred color, by both children and design professionals. Children’s gender differences were found in that boys prefer red and purple less than girls. Pediatric patients reported lower preference scores for yellow than did healthy children. These findings lead to color application guidelines for designers to understand color more and eventually to create better environments for children and their families.

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Forty-two college aged participants took part in a mixed repeated measures factorial design experiment that assessed color memory as a function of condition (practice with feedback, practice without feedback and no practice), dimension (hue, saturation and lightness) and color (red, yellow, green and blue). Attention was focused on the distinction between memory color and color memory, color experience and preference, mechanisms of color perception and theories of color vision (see below). Only two significant effects were found: a significant main effect for dimension and a significant interaction between dimension and color. Pearson correlations were assessed between color memory and color experience, color preference and observer imagery. None of the correlations were significant. The results of the experiments revealed that practice does not have a significant effect on color memory and the conclusion, therefore, is that the phenomenon of color memory is not improved by practice. A tentative explanation involves the early stages of color processing which are presumed to be computational in nature and to take place independently of cognitive processes such as learning and memory, which do not take place until visual information has reached the extrastriate areas. By that time, color information has been combined with information about context, in area V4 of the human visual cortex (Zeki & Marini, 1998). Although it has been shown through this experiment that practice does not improve memory for color, the possibility remains that practice may improve memory color for specific objects - namely ecologically relevant stimuli - since memory color involves higher order processing, such as learning and memory. / Master of Science

This study was made in the Demonstration School of the North Texas State Teacher's College, using the children of Grades I to V inclusive as subjects of the investigation. The problem was taken to try to discover if children of a certain age group have definite color preferences and other related questions such as if these preferences remain constant, if they are influenced by other factors such as intelligence, sex, or grade, and if there is consistency noticeable in the preferences of a group at any given grade level. It is also the aim of this study to see how the children of the Demonstration School compare with other groups that have been tested, to suggest possible reasons for differences, and to set forth a procedure that could be followed in order to secure more significant results than those which have been obtained by other investigators.