6 Responses

1. Useful Web Sites
   http://www.isdesignet.com/Magazine/May'97/Colorwkplc.html

   http://www.shibuya.com/garden/colorpsycho.html

   http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html

   http://www.catherinemcgivern.com/interiors/color_and_psychology.htm

   http://psychology.about.com/library/weekly/aa031501a.htm

2. May help to look up Accelerated learning research
   Hi Gwen
   I designed a training centre for a previous employer to reflect an accelerated learning environment. The rooms were given themes and different colour schemes. The main purpose was to create a different feel to each and ensure that they all had some personality, to the extent they had different lighting, different furniture etc etc. I remember reading about how mood is affected by both environment and background colour in some of the literature about Accelerated learning – try Colin Rose ( he must have a website) is one writer on AL or one of the other mainly ammerican books on the subject. Jensen is another !!
   Colour can be a great mood stimulus – but if you need research then this field may be helpful.

   Try wearing a really colourful shirt / blouse or dress to a meeting and tell me no one notices ! Well rooms are the same, and our minds pick up the cues all the time. See Tony Buzan on mindmaps to see his view on colours and learning.

   Cheers
   Mark

3. Colour in learning rooms
   Gwen Turpin,
   I have masses of information on how colour affects learning. It’s a fascinating subject, and I’m always amazed that so few people pay any attention to it, but that could be because there’s no one easy answer. It depends on what you hope to achieve in your learning centre, and what kind of things people will be doing there.
   You say you have decorated the learning centre in bright colours, but you don’t say which colours. If you have used a selection of primary colours, you have created a simulating environment, and that may be visually distracting – it may create a buzz of excitement, imparting lots of energy and enthusiasm to the room, but, on the other hand, this could make it very hard to concentrate, and it could get rather noisy.
   For example certain colours, or combinations of colours, instil creative thought, perfect for problem-solving or formulating new ideas; others are better for getting conversation flowing, which would be great if you want a collaborative environment, but not so good for self-study in a technical subject.
   Don’t forget there are hues of colours. A certain shade of green is considered very ‘safe’ and calming, so is ideal when people feel threatened by new material, like learning unfamiliar software packages. However, a deep green can feel oppressive, and pea-green appears ‘sickly’ especially under fluorescent light. Which leads to another area I have researched, that of the effect of light in a learning context. We do learners a great disservice in learning centres up and down the country, when, with a bit of thought we could offer something really outstanding that actually helped with learning.
   If you want to learn more, please get in touch. I will happily respond if I can help further.
   Anne Marples

4. customer response to colour scheme
   Just a comment in support of using bright or strong colours. Our clients all love our colour schemes at Room Four Business Venue. We picked colours that we liked – purple, aqua, burgundy, plum and orange (not too bright) and everyone who has visited the place since we opened last year comments on how effective the colours are and what a pleasant working environment it makes. Well done for giving it a whirl and I hope that you bring the sceptics around.
   Lynn Clarke

5. Learning with Colour
   Hi Gwen

   You could try the following too:

   http://www.colormatters.com/

   http://www.ergogero.com/FAQ/cfaqhome.html

   http://www.colorsystem.com/

6. Look in UKHRD archive
   Have a look in the UKHRD site archive. There was a very full debate about this issue there a few months ago. Everyone has different views of course, and personal likes and dislikes. I am not sure that anything very scientific was proved but there was some commonality about the moods that certain colours seem to generate.