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Color is an intangible, powerful sensation that, beyond being an essential design feature, has the ability to enhance our physical environment, influence our personal experience of space, and provide a greater sense of health and wellbeing.
This featured content explores the key aspects of color relevant to a student or practitioner of design and provides free-to-read content from across Fairchild Books Interior Design Library ranging from the fundamentals of color theory to its cultural significance.
Color theory is the study and practice of the principles used to understand the relationship between color, light and our visual experience of art and design. An understanding of the scientific aspects of color is crucial for designers to work out how design choices influence perception. The chapter Vision and Color from The New Munsell Student Color Set by Ron Reed outlines how the physiology of the eye, the visual system, produces a perception of color in the brain.
Without light there is no color. The properties of lights, such as whether the light source is natural or artificial, direct or indirect, greatly impacts a space. For example, spaces flooded with low natural light levels, which occur early in the morning and late in the evening, tend to feel more intimate and quieter. The chapter color + theory from Color Plus Design: Transforming Interior Space delves into color fundamentals, exploring the characteristics of color that produce tint, tone and shade as well as outlining the color systems available to designers. The chapter color + unity + harmony looks at how color theory can be applied to create harmony and accentuate the interior and unify design elements.
Beyond the aesthetics of design, color has practical role in making interiors accessible and inclusive.
The use of color in environments such as hospital and airports is important for our ability to wayfind and orient ourselves. For example, some colors as well as colored light can be difficult to distinguish when viewed from a distance. The chapter Information Management, Color, and Wayfinding from Environmental Psychology for Design by Dak Kopec explores the practical ways in which color and symbols are used in wayfinding systems and how this relates to how people perceive and conceptualize space.
Designing environments with a consideration for how lighting design combines with color is essential to create environments which support comfort, health, and visual performance. For example, those with color-blindness can easily confuse colors and as people age their perception of color often changes. For more on color and designing for inclusivity, see the chapter Persons with Disabilities from Human Factors in the Built Environment by Linda L. Nussbaumer.
Emotions are so tightly tied to our perception of color that we often use expressions which link them such as “feeling blue” or “seeing red”.
Across cultures and eras, people have used color to convey powerful religious, mystical, and national messages. However, color does not have a fixed or universal meaning, its significance is culturally constructed and shaped by historical, social, religious and geographical contexts.
In the chapter Color symbolism from Color Studies, authors Edith Anderson Feisner and Ronald Reed look at how color influences our lives through its cultural significance, prevalence in nature and use in product design. The chapter Color Anomalies, Emotional Response, and Symbolism from The New Munsell Student Color Set by Ron Reed explores how color has been applied across design, art, and fashion to communicate information, bring about an emotional response and leave a lasting impression.
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