Color ambiance in interiors

Abstract

Ambiance is the character and atmosphere of a place that is of great importance to interior designers both to express themselves and to create emotionally fulfi lling spaces. Color and lighting are powerful design tools for creating different ambiances. This chapter purports to fi nd out how colored light is used in an interior to provide a specifi c ambiance. One hundred and fourteen undergraduate interior architecture students were asked to make twelve groups to create either a “calming” or “exciting” ambiance in a specially designed set-up. All groups were free to use red, yellow, green, blue, and white colored lights. Findings of the study indicated that for an exciting ambiance, general and foreground brightness were kept bright and color contrasts were used. A calming ambiance was created with dimmed general and foreground brightness and with subtle color differences. Furthermore, factor analysis was used to group the related items in creating an ambiance according to their importance.