The Role of Color in Healthcare Environments, Emergent Bodies of Evidence-based Design Approach

The objective of this study is to overview the literature relative to color, as an environmental constituent, and its impacts in healthcare environments. Borrowing from the environmental behavioral paradigm, this study attempts to decipher myths and misconceptions as well as highlight well-evidenced research findings. Broad Literature review journal articles and reports of empirical studies in multiple disciplines were studied to identify theories, which could have design implications for color in healthcare design. Despite the incongruity and fragmentation of previous studies, it emerges from this overview that color impacts healthcare outcomes by reducing medical errors, promoting the sense of well-being, reducing stress, improving patients sleep, reducing length of stay, reducing spatial disorientation, increasing patient satisfaction, and increasing staff morale and productivity. While the review of literature indicates major findings relative to the impact of color on healthcare environments, yet ambiguities remained to be addressed. Previous studies on the use of color in healthcare environment have illustrated that there are some obvious, replicable, behavioral and perceptual effects from color that addressed their use in certain ways for design. However, color must be observed and analyzed in the contextual application to avoid generalizations about color perception and mood affects.