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Meaning and Preference of Color Palettes Meaning and Preference of Color Palettes

Among Four CulturesAmong Four Cultures

Youngsoon Park , Ph.D Yonsei University, Seoul KoreaYoungsoon Park , Ph.D Yonsei University, Seoul Korea Jiyoung Yoon, Ph.D Dongseo University, Busan KoreaJiyoung Yoon, Ph.D Dongseo University, Busan KoreaDenise Guerin, Ph.D University of Minnesota, U.S.ADenise Guerin, Ph.D University of Minnesota, U.S.A

Sep. 2002Sep. 2002

Meaning and Preference of Color Palettes Among Four Meaning and Preference of Color Palettes Among Four CulturesCultures


Introduction

Color Color is an inherent visual property of form in the natural and designed environments. As part of the designed environment, interiors are designed using color as well as the elements of light, space, form, shape, line, and texture to meet a variety of human needs. Interior designers consider many aspects of color when specifying the color palette of an environment in the process of solving a design problem. Functional and aesthetically pleasing interiors have color palettes that reflect the meanings users attach to specific colors. That works well when working within a homogeneous culture where color meanings are common to all, however interior designers are frequently working within multi-cultural environments, which may result in people attaching various meanings and significance to color.

Color researchers have investigated peoples’ social meanings and responses to individual colors and their separate dimensions, but what is lacking in past research is the use of an instrument to study the meaning of color in interior environments based on an integrated

view of colors within an interior, or an integrated color palettes.


An integrated color palette is the combination of several colors that are used for

interior components such as walls, floors, ceilings, window treatments, and

furnishings. It is characterized by combining hue, value, and chroma as well as

color contrast, overlapping, and adjacencies. Park and Guerin (1995) developed

such an integrated color palette to be used as a visual research instrument to allo

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subjects to focus only on the meaning of color in the interior environment without

influencing cultural factors of furniture or artifacts.

Introduction

This study used this integrated color palette to identify

differences in color meaning and color preferences in

interior environments in four different cultures, American,

English, Korean, and Japanese.

palette A



An important distinction, however, was that previous studies investigated a

single color hue, not a designed selection of colors, or the color palette, which is

more representative of how color is actually viewed by users in the interior

environment. The following literature review summarizes some of the studies

related to color preference, color meaning, cross cultural studies, and the method

and instruments used to investigate color.

Review of Color Study


Meaning and Preference of Color Palettes Among Four Meaning and Preference of Color Palettes Among Four CulturesCulturesReview of Color Study

Theme

Color

Preference

researcher Findings & Suggestions

Osgood (1961)defined meaning as a representational mediation process that includes the interpretation and expression of ideas

Sharpe,(1982)Webster’s(1992) Butterfield (1990)

Meaning occurs when a significance is formed in the mind and may differ for each individual; it is subjective and based on various experiences, education, and culture

Rapoport (1982)

Albers (1975)

His results showed that individual differences in age, gender, and social status were related to color selection and preference

Whitfield (1984)

Ireland, Warren, and Herringer (1992)

the high-anxiety subgroups preferred less saturated shades across the six colorstested than did low-anxiety subjects. This may explain some environmental differences in the experience of anxiety or in reactions to physical settings in general.

Kwallek (1996)

assessed environmental characteristics of office environments including a sense of spaciousness, pleasantness, and unpleasantness in comparing monochromatic red, green, and white office color palettes.

The white office was rated as the most spacious and the most pleasant.

Color

Meaning

socio-cultural forces are important in meaning formation. different meanings are inferred by different socio-cultural groups and similar meanings occur across groups in relation to shared experiences

In addition to the dimensions of hue, value, and chroma, the relationships of color olor contrast, overlapping, and adjacencies are important factors in understanding color meaning in the designed interior



Theme

Color and

Environment

researcher Findings & Suggestions


Contrast is a distinct difference between two parts of the same color dimension, such as the lightness or darkness of the value and theweakness or strength of the chroma

Doyle, 1993

Adjacency of colors considers the effect of colors that are next to oneanother in an interior (). This must be considered when determiningthe total color palette; one color may appear different when viewed with a group of colors.

Hope & Walch, 1990

Evans, Fellows, Zorn, Doty , 1980

subjects made significantly fewer errors in a way-finding task in a color coded building when compared to subjects in a non-color coded building.They suggested that color has enough meaning to be used as a communication tool.

Mikellides (1990) chromatic strength, and not hue, appeared to be the key dimension affecting how exciting or calming a color was perceived to be.

Acking and Kuller(1972)

'weak' colors in a room give subjects the impression of calmness while'strong' colors made it appear exciting. They used descriptor words to investigate color characteristics in several different studies (1967; 1968a; 1968b; 1968c; 1969; 1972). Five representative factors of interior color were found among the different experiments - pleasantness, social, spatial enclosedness, complexity, and unity.

Description

of Color

Meaning




Theme researcher Findings & Suggestions

Cross-cultural

Color Studies

culture is one of the main underlying reasons why individuals of various cultures prefer different colors. color preference changed from earlier developmental stages to later adulthood.

Choungourain,1968; 1969,

Saito (1994) conducted a comparative study on color preference of 474 subjects in Tokyo, Taiwan, and Tianjin. preferences of associative images of colorare based on environmental and cultural aspects and may be one of theimportant factors that influences color preference.

These studies indicate that there is a different interpretation of the meaning of color based on the subject’s culture. However, color meaning was studied as it related only to a single color, i.e. red, blue, yellow. Until the recent development of an instrument to study the meaning of color in interior environments based on color palettes (Guerin & Park, 1995), it has been difficult to comparatively study the cultural meaning of color palettes.



The previous studies raise the following questions: Does the culture of a subject affect the cultural preference and meaning of color palettes for users of interior environments? If so, what are the implications for interior designers and the color palettes they use when designing for diverse cultures? From the literature review these three hypotheses were developed.

HO1HO1: There is a significant difference in the meaning of interior color palettes

among English, Korean, Japanese, and United States subjects.

HO2HO2: There is a significant difference in the meaning of color palettes between Eastern cultures (Korean and Japanese) and Western cultures (United States and English).

HO3HO3: There is a significant difference in color palette preference among the four different cultures.

Hypothesis


The purpose of the study was to use Guerin and Parks’s integrated color palette to identify differences in the meaning and preference of interior color palettes in four different cultures. To collect data to explore this issue, slides of six interior color palettes were shown to subjects of four different cultures, English (N=115), Korean (N=103), Japanese (N=99), and United States (N=108)subjects. As the subjects viewed each palette, they completed a questionnaire comprised of descriptor words. The subjects indicated the degree of presence of that description in each palette.


Methods



In a previous study (Guerin, et al), an integrated color palette was developed is an instrument to measure the meaning of color in the interior environment. The integrated color palette was a computer generated composition of color including hue, value, and chroma variations

The integrated color paletteThe integrated color palette is composed of vertical and horizontal lines and shapes representative of those that occur in interior environments. The proportion of the two-dimensional shapes or sections represents the

different components in an interior. 1) Large planes represent the walls, floor, and ceiling.2) Medium size planes represent furnishings and window treatments. 3) The smallest planes represent accessories. 4) The asymmetrically balanced arrangement of various sized rectangular shapes simulates the relationships of interior color contrast, overlapping, and adjacency.

Color Palette Instrument



All six color palettes to control for the effect of shape juxtaposition.

Additionally, the proportion of colors is represented by the various sizes of color planes. The six integrated color palettes were developed from six pictures of residential living rooms, one palette represented one picture. (For a complete description of this processsee Guerin & Park, 1995).

Color Palette Instrument



Fourteen wordsFourteen words that described characteristics of interior environments were used to determine meaning subjects gave to each palette (see Table 1).

The words were listed in random order on a questionnaire with the same order for each palette. A five point (0-5), single-word, Likert-type scale wasused to measure the degree of presence of the characteristic, or meaning, in each palette. Zero indicated the characteristic, in the subject's opinion, was not present; five indicated the characteristic, in the subject's opinion,was present to a large degree. The degree of presence of the characteristic,or meaning, increased as the number increased. These words had been vaidated as appropriate descriptors of interior environments in other studies (Acking & Kuller, 1967; Guerin & Park, 1995).

Words selected: Words selected:

Calming, Comfortable, Coordinated, Expensive, Intricate, Inviting, Calming, Comfortable, Coordinated, Expensive, Intricate, Inviting, Modest, Open, Ordered, Pleasant, Rich, Sophisticated, Spacious, Modest, Open, Ordered, Pleasant, Rich, Sophisticated, Spacious, UnifiedUnified

Description of Color Palette



Five dimensions of each palette were measured: hue, value, chroma,value contrast, and chroma contrast. First these components arediscussed then each palette is described based on thesecharacteristics.

1) Hue is defined by Munsell (1946) as the distinctive characteristic ofany chromatic color distinguishing it from other hues, such as arefound in the spectrum or between the ends of the spectrum. It isdescribed by using the color names red, yellow, green, blue, orpurple.

2) Value is defined as the lightness or darkness of any color(Munsell,1946). Value is described as dark, middle, or light. Munsell (1946)defined chroma as the strength or weakness of a Chromatic color. 3) Chroma is described as weak, moderate, or strong. Contrast Idefined as the form that appears when two colors in contact seemdifferent from what they would when viewed separately (Munsell,1946).

Color Dimension Measured



Palette A Palette B Palette C Palette D Palette E Palette F

Hue Neutral (64.8%) Warm (79.9%) Warm (68.5%) Neutral (76.5%) Neutral (45.0%) Warm (84.1%) Cool (27.3%) Neutral (18.8%) Cool (23.8%) Warm (21.2%) Warm (30.7%) Neutral(15.9%) Warm (7.6%) Cool (1.2%) Neutral (7.6%) Cool (2.1%) Cool (28.3%) Cool (0.0%)

Value Light (70.2%) Light (59.2%) Medium(63.8%) Light (57.9%) Medium(72.3%) Medium(50.0%) Medium(24.6%) Medium(27.5%) Light (36.6%) Medium(28.9%) Light (27.2%) Dark (35.1%) Dark (4.9%) Dark (13.2%) Dark (0.0%) Dark (13.0%) Dark (0.5%) Light (14.9%)

Chroma Weak (64.8%) Medium(44.9%) Medium(62.4%) Weak (76.6%) Weak (45.0%) Medium(63.3%) Medium(21.0%) Strong (36.2%) Strong (29.9%) Strong (21.2%) Strong (29.5%) Strong (20.7%) Strong(13.9%) Weak (18.8%) Weak (7.6%) Medium(2.1%) Medium(25.5%) Weak (15.9%)

Value High Low Low High Medium MediumContrast (6.3/5.4) (4.5/5.4) (6.6/5.4) (4.4/5.4) (4.9/5.4) (5.9/5.4)

Chroma Low Medium Medium Medium High Low Contrast (8.2/10.1) (10.3/10.1) (10.2/10.1) (10.4/10.1) (13.5/10.1) (7.8/10.1)

<Table 1> Color Dimension Measured



Characteristics of each paletteCharacteristics of each palette shown in Table 1

Palette A: neutral hues, light value, weak chroma, high value contrast, low chroma contrast. Palette B: warm hues, light value, moderate chroma, low value contrast, medium chroma contrast. Palette C: warm hues, middle value, moderate chroma, low value contrast, medium chroma contrast.

Palette A Palette B Palette c



Characteristics of each paletteCharacteristics of each palette shown in Table 1

Palette D: neutral hues, light value, weak chroma, high value contrast, medium chroma contrast. Palette E: neutral hues, middle value, weak chroma, medium value contrast, high chroma contrast. Palette F: warm hues, middle value, moderate chroma, medium value contrast, low chroma contrast.

Palette D Palette E Palette F



The subjects were shown slides of the six color palettes in a darkened auditorium. As each slide of a color palette was shown, the subjects completed the questionnaire containing the descriptor words for that palette. The subjects also responded to several demographic questions such as age, gender, and major.

Sample DescriptionSample Description The sample was a convenience sample drawn from universities in England,

Korea, Japan, and the United States. Each group contained males and females with the proportions of females slightly higher. Each group had a similar number of subjects (about 100) with a similar mean age. The students majored in social science, architecture, design, business, and psychology with an almost even distribution among the five majors. It was important to have both design and non-design students in the sample.

Procedure

Culture number male female age range mean age England 115 55 60 20-24 22

Japan 99 60 39 20-24 22

Korea 103 43 69 20-24 22

United States 108 40 68 18-40 26

<Table 2>



The palettes developed for this study were based only on residential interiors. They were also limited in their range of hues, values, chromas, and contrast. The subjects selected were from the student populations of major universities in each country. The age range among the samples were not significantly different, but the age range was not representative of the population of each country. Finally, all cultures were not asked to select their preferred palette. The researchers used a method to extrapolate preference responses from the meaning responses for two of the cultures. Finally, there is always some apprehension that the meaning of words changes when translated from one language to another. A different method of translation has been developed for future studies.

Limitation of study

An ANOVA and multiple range tests (Scheffe method) were used to identify the similarities and differences among subjects’ responses in the four cultures related to color meaning in interior environments. The cultures were separately compared to one another to examine how they differ in expressing the meaning of each color palette: United States and England, United States and Japan, United States and Korea, Englandand Japan, England and Korea, and Japan and Korea. Additionally, the Eastern cultures(Korean and Japan) were compared to the Western cultures (United States and Englan

d).

Statistics



Hypothesis 1Hypothesis 1 : there is a significant difference among subjects in different cultures as related to themeaning of interior color palettes.

In five of the six palettes, over 60% of the wordsshowed a significant difference among cultures. Palette C was the highest (93%) with only one word rated as the same among cultures. PaletteC has warm hues, medium value, medium chroma, low value contrast, and medium chromacontrast. It seems that the cultures have a significantly different meaning for palette C, that is, the presence of the descriptor words were significantly different. Palettes B and F have significant differences in 12 words (86%). Palette A and palette E were slightly less. Palette D was the only one with less than half of the world (43%) having significant differences. Palette C had 93% of the words found to besignificantly different among cultures. This palette has warm hues as do Palettes B and F, which also had significant differences in the vast majority of the words.

Findings

Palette # of words with SD ratio

<Table 3> Differences in Color meaning

Palette A 10/14 71% Palette B 12/14 86% Palette C 13/14 93% Palette D 6/14 43% Palette E 9/14 64% Palette F 12/14 86%


Hypothesis 2 was supported with 50% of all cases (words and palettes) different for the Eastern versus Western cultures (see Table 5). However, when we look closely at the data, the Eastern cultures of Korea and Japan had 45% of the cases the same and 20% cases were significantly different. Between Japan and Korea, there is similarity in the meaning of color palette. In the Western cultures of England and the United States, 22% cases were the same and 42% of the cases were significantly different. The similarity between U.S. and England in the meaning of color palette is not as great as that between Japan and Korea.


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Hypothesis 2Hypothesis 2 : there is a significant difference between Eastern culture (Korea and Japan) and Western cultures (United States and England) in the meaning of color palettes.

Findings

meaning Western vs Eastern U.S. vs England Japan vs Korea

same 51( 22%) 13 (22%) 27 (45%)

neutral 69 (29%) 22 (37%) 21 (35%)

different 120 (50%) 25 (42%) 12 (20%)

<Table 4> Color meaning bet/ Western and Eastern

Total 240 (100%) 60 (100%) 60 (100%)


Hypothesis 3Hypothesis 3 : there is a significant difference among cultures as related to color palette preference.

To determine preference, four words (comfortable, coordinated, inviting, and sophisticated) had the greatest amount of presence as identified by the subjects. Palette A is most preferred by the Eastern culture and the least preferred by the Western culture. Palette C is the most preferred by the Western culture and, while not the least preferred by the Eastern culture, it falls to number three in rankings. This hypothesis is supported by the findings; there are preference differences between Eastern and Western cultures and differences among the individual cultures. United States subjects prefer Palette C, English subjects prefer Palette F, Japanese subjects prefer Palette A, and Korean subjects prefer Palette E.

Findings

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meaning U.S England Japan Korea Western Eastern

Palette A 2.28 (5) 1.76 (6) 2.86 (1) 2.50 (2) 2.01 (6) 2.68 (1)

<Table 5> Cultural Preference

Palette C 3.14 (1) 2.53 (2) 2.46 (2) 2.35 (4) 2.83 (1) 2.40 (3) Palette D 2.11 (6) 1.92 (5) 2.24 (5) 2.20 (6) 2.01 (5) 2.22 (5) Palette E 2.81 (3) 2.39 (4) 2.45 (3) 2.59 (1) 2.59 (3) 2.52 (2) Palette F 2.91 (2) 2.71 (1) 2.27 (4) 2.43 (3) 2.81 (2) 2.35 (4)

Palette B 2.46 (4) 2.42 (3) 2.04 (6) 2.29 (5) 2.44 (4) 2.17 (6)



Palette APalette A, most preferred by Japanese and least preferred by England is comprised of neutral hues, light value, weak chroma. Overall, there is high value contrast as it is simple and cool in appearance. Palette C was most preferred by United States and least preferred by Korea. This palette has warm hues, middle value, moderate chroma, low value contrast, and medium chroma contrast. Many hues are evident in this palette such as red, blue, green and yellow, even though the hues are subtle. Overall, the palette appears colorful. Due to the varied hues and low range of variation in value and chroma,

it can be suggested that hue is more important than value or chroma in determining meaning.

Palette EPalette E was most preferred by Koreans. It has neutral hues, middle value, weak chroma, and medium to high contrast. It shows obvious red and blue hues, which reflect the Korean Yin-Yang principle of harmony. Palette F was most preferred by England. This palette has warm hues, middle value, moderate chroma, and medium to low contrast. Overall this palette is monotone and low in stimulation due to the lack of contrast. Interestingly, Palette D received a low preference ranking by all cultures. Further investigation of this palette may help discover some relationship between meaning and preference.

Discussion

Palette A

Palette E



In summary, this study had three major findings. First, it was found that cultures do differ in their preference and meaning of color palette

s. Second, there is a suggested relationship between preference and meaning. Third, and most important for interior designers, the preferred hue temperature, value level, chroma level, and contrast level was determined for four different cultures. However, since there were limitations in the color palettes shown to the subjects, these palettes and preferences must be further tested.

Discussion

In future studies, the interiors could reflect award winning interiors so there is someassurance that these are well designed and that the color palettes are appropriatechoices to reflect a certain concept.

The next study conducted by the researchers will include a set of palettes selected frompublished non-residential interiors and fulfill the range of hues, values, chromas, andcontrast. By conducting this research with a larger sample, broader representation ofage and gender, and among several cultures and sub-cultures, a base-line of data couldbe developed. Also, the question about the importance of contrast to color meaningshould be further explored.

Implications



Color palettes are an appropriate way to test the meaning and preference of color within and between cultures. Meaning and preference do vary by culture. Continued study in this area can help designers determine which hue, value, chroma, and contrast levels to use for specific cultures. As the world grows smaller, designers will be called upon to design for more diverse cultures than that from which they come. As further research refines the method and a larger data base is developed for various cultures, interior designers will be able to develop color palettes that reflect specific meanings for various cultures, ensuring greater potential for success when designing for diverse cultures.

Conclusion


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