The Psychological and Physiological Effects of Light and Colour on Space Users

The impact of colour and light conditions on our emotional and physical health and wellbeing is gaining greater importance in our urban societies. While large resources are allocated for well designed buildings with the right choice of colour and lighting conditions, there are little scientific evidence that supports these choices. The aim of this research was to determine the impact of different colours and lighting conditions on people, using non-invasive means. Close correlations between cardiac activity, our emotions and health are well reported in literature and hence it is expected to be a good measure of environmental conditions on people. Electrocardiogram (ECG) is the non-invasive recording of the cardiac activity. Thus, this paper reports experimental research conducted where changes in ECG were measured when the participants were exposed to different colour and light conditions. The results of these experiments show that there is a change in heart rate (HR) due to change in colour and lighting conditions.