Colored apparel and its potential influence on heterosexual attraction

The objective of this study is to determine if men would follow the “red effect” when choosing colors for women to wear on a date, and also to determine if the colors that men would wear when going on a date would be the same as the colors that females (their date) would wish them to wear. A set of psychophysical data was generated from this experiment, where participants were asked to rank a set of 10 colored samples based on preference for each question asked. There were three different sets of colored samples. The set of colored samples given to the participant depended on the question. A total of five questions were asked. Scaling analysis was done on the data to organize a set of items according to preferences providing values, an interval scale (Z values), that correspond to the relative perceptual differences among the stimuli. The Z values were graphed to show the general preference of colors for women to wear, and the preference of colors for men to wear. A Spearman's rank-order correlation coefficient (SRCC) was calculated comparing each individual's rank order with the mean rank order for that specific question. An average Spearman's rank order was calculated for each question and each gender in order to determine the variability in answers. Scaling results indicate that men follow the “red effect,” but women preferred to wear other colors such as turquoise, blue, or yellow depending on the outfit. Males and females agreed that no matter the colored bottoms (denim or black), blue was the preferred color top for men to wear. SRCC results showed a lot of variability between individual answers and the mean answer indicating that participants' rankings did not necessarily agree with general color preferences presented in the scaling analysis. While scaling analysis might suggest certain color preferences such as men following the “red effect” and women preferring to wear blue, the poor correlation found using SRCC between the individual answers and the mean rank orders suggests that color preferences for each individual are inherently unique.     

The role of individual colour preferences in consumer purchase decisions

The purpose of this study is to test whether consumers' personal colour preferences (in an abstract sense rather than for a particular product) affect their intended product purchase decisions if they are given various colour choices. This work employs two experiments with visual components to investigate which colour a participant would choose if asked to select a product to purchase when there is a range of colours available. Two experiments were also designed to elicit a response about which colour each participant prefers (in an abstract sense). The study finds that personal colour preferences affect intended product‐colour purchase decisions but that the extent of this varies from one product category to the next. Further analysis reveals that personal colour preferences are secondary to factors such as colour functionality and colour performance. This work presents new experimental data about the role of colour in product and product packaging on intended consumer purchase decisions. A conceptual framework, supported by the experimental findings, are understanding the relationship between individual colour preferences and product‐choice colours, and more functional aspects of colour itself (such as the effect of colour on product's performance or functionality).     

Colour and tolerance of preferred skin colours on digital photographic images

Skin‐tone has been an active research subject in photographic colour reproduction. There is a consistent conclusion that preferred skin colours are different from actual skin colours. However, preferred skin colours found from different studies are somewhat different. To have a solid understanding of skin colour preference of digital photographic images, psychophysical experiments were conducted to determine a preferred skin colour region and to study inter‐observer variation and tolerance of preferred skin colours. In the first experiment, a preferred skin colour region is searched on the entire skin colour region. A set of nine predetermined colour centers uniformly sampled within the skin colour ellipse in CIELAB a*b* diagram is used to morph skin colours of test images. Preferred skin colour centers are found through the experiment. In a second experiment, a twice denser sampling of nine skin colour centers around the preferred skin colour center determined in the first experiment are generated to repeat the experiment using a different set of test images and judged by a different panel of observers. The results from both experiments are compared and final preferred skin colour centers are obtained. Variations and hue and chroma tolerances of the observer skin colour preference are also analysed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2013     

A study of colour emotion and colour preference. Part III: Colour preference modeling

In this study three colour preference models for single colours were developed. The first model was developed on the basis of the colour emotions, clean–dirty, tense–relaxed, and heavy–light. In this model colour preference was found affected most by the emotional feeling “clean.” The second model was developed on the basis of the three colour‐emotion factors identified in Part I, colour activity, colour weight, and colour heat. By combining this model with the colour‐science‐based formulae of these three factors, which have been developed in Part I, one can predict colour preference of a test colour from its colour‐appearance attributes. The third colour preference model was directly developed from colour‐appearance attributes. In this model colour preference is determined by the colour difference between a test colour and the reference colour (L*, a*, b*) = (50, ?8, 30). The above approaches to modeling single‐colour preference were also adopted in modeling colour preference for colour combinations. The results show that it was difficult to predict colour‐combination preference by colour emotions only. This study also clarifies the relationship between colour preference and colour harmony. The results show that although colour preference is strongly correlated with colour harmony, there are still colours of which the two scales disagree with each other. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 29, 381–389, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20047     

A colour harmony model for two‐colour combinations

This study investigates harmony in two‐colour combinations in order to develop a quantitative model. A total of 1431 colour pairs were used as stimuli in a psychophysical experiment for the visual assessment of harmony. These colour pairs were generated using 54 colours selected systematically from CIELAB colour space. During the experiment, observers were presented with colour pairs displayed individually against a medium gray background on a cathode ray tube monitor in a darkened room. Colour harmony was assessed for each colour pair using a 10‐category scale ranging from “extremely harmonious” to “extremely disharmonious.” The experimental results showed a general pattern of two‐colour harmony, from which a quantitative model was developed and principles for creating harmony were derived. This model was tested using an independent psychophysical data set and the results showed satisfactory performance for model prediction. The study also discusses critical issues including the definition of colour harmony, the relationship between harmony and pleasantness, and the relationship between harmony and order in colour. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 31, 191–204, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20208     

A study of colour emotion and colour preference. Part II: Colour emotions for two‐colour combinations

Eleven colour‐emotion scales, warm–cool, heavy–light, modern–classical, clean–dirty, active–passive, hard–soft, harmonious–disharmonious, tense–relaxed, fresh–stale, masculine–feminine, and like–dislike, were investigated on 190 colour pairs with British and Chinese observers. Experimental results show that gender difference existed in masculine–feminine, whereas no significant cultural difference was found between British and Chinese observers. Three colour‐emotion factors were identified by the method of factor analysis and were labeled “colour activity,” “colour weight,” and “colour heat.” These factors were found similar to those extracted from the single colour emotions developed in Part I. This indicates a coherent framework of colour emotion factors for single colours and two‐colour combinations. An additivity relationship was found between single‐colour and colour‐combination emotions. This relationship predicts colour emotions for a colour pair by averaging the colour emotions of individual colours that generate the pair. However, it cannot be applied to colour preference prediction. By combining the additivity relationship with a single‐colour emotion model, such as those developed in Part I, a colour‐appearance‐based model was established for colour‐combination emotions. With this model one can predict colour emotions for a colour pair if colour‐appearance attributes of the component colours in that pair are known. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 29, 292–298, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20024     

The influence of emergency signage on building evacuation behavior: An experimental study

Emergency signage is important for safe escape when unexpected events (such as fires) occur. However, there are limited data on the difference in the effect of emergency signage on way finding processes between individual and group conditions. This paper aims to reveal how participants alone or in groups detect and accept the information conveyed by a signage system through an experiment in buildings. One hundred nineteen volunteers participated in the experiment, which included individual and group evacuation conditions. There were six decision points along the movement path where participants could select egress routes according to signage. Posttrial questionnaires and video recordings were used to derive the number of participants whose route choice was according to signage and to derive the decision time. Results demonstrate that both signage detection and acceptance probabilities under individual conditions are larger than those under group situations, because of social influence in groups. High‐placed signs have a positive effect on route choice, especially under individual conditions. Decision time for participants whose decisions are principally according to signs is not always smaller than that for participants whose decisions are not according to signs, eg, in group situations. These findings have implications for group evacuation modeling and signage design in buildings.     

A data set for fuzzy colour naming

In computer vision, colour naming has been posed as a fuzzy‐set problem where each colour category is modeled by a function that assigns a membership value to any given sample. However, the success in the automation of this process relies on having an appropriate psychophysical data set for this purpose. In this article we present a data set obtained from a colour‐naming experiment. In this experiment, we used a scoring method to collect a set of judgments adequate for the fuzzy modeling of the colour‐naming task. The data set is composed of 387 colour reflectances, their CIELab and Munsell values, and the corresponding judgments provided by the subjects in the experiment. These judgments are the membership values to the 11 basic colour categories proposed by Berlin and Kay (Berlin B, Kay P. Berkeley: University of California; 1969). All these data have been made available online ( http://www.cvc.uab.es/color_naming ) and, in this article we provide a wide analysis of them. To prove the suitability of the proposed scoring methodology, we have computed a set of common statistics in colour‐naming experiments, such as consensus and consistency, on our data set. The results make it possible for us to conclude the coherence of our data with previous experiments and, thus, its usefulness for the fuzzy modeling of colour naming. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 31, 48–56, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20172     

The use of sensory difference tests to investigate perceptible colour‐difference in a cosmetic product

Two sensory difference tests have been used to assess the ability of an untrained population to perceive colour difference in a cosmetic product. The two tests used were the triangle test and the “two‐out‐of‐five” test. Participants were presented with groups of samples with varying colour differences and asked to identify the odd sample in the triangle test and the pair in the two‐out‐of‐five test. From these data, the number of correct responses was correlated with the calculated colour difference using three colour‐difference equations (CMC, CIE94, and CIEDE2000). These correlations were optimized by varying the parameters in the colour‐difference equations. With the parameters optimized, each of the three colour‐difference equations gave a correlation coefficient of ～0.97 with the two‐out‐of‐five test and a correlation coefficient of ～0.79 with the triangle test. These correlation coefficients suggest that sensory difference testing can be used to investigate perception of colour difference. However, for the triangle test the correlation between the sensory data and the calculated colour difference is weak and the two‐out‐of‐five test should be preferred. The minimum perceptible colour difference was estimated from the regression plots between the optimised colour‐difference equations and the sensory data. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 29, 299–304, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20025     

Ecommerce interface colour and consumer decision making: Two routes of influence

This article reports an empirical study of the effects of interface colour (blue vs. grey) on ecommerce decision making. Participants viewed a set of products and information on the attributes of each and then made a series of purchase decisions that provided the basis for individual rankings of this set. Results support two proposed ‘routes of influence’. In the first, interface colour influences the cognitive capacities and strategies of consumers. This was evident as participants considered more attributes in the grey interface condition. Importantly, this was not mediated by participants' affective state. In the second, interface colour exerts influence via participants' aesthetic judgements. This was evident at a product‐specific level—with colour‐related differences in product selection decisions mediated (for two product alternatives) by participants' assessments of product aesthetics. There was also some support for a product‐generic effect of interface colour—with product aesthetics tending to be more influential in the grey condition. Overall, the results demonstrate the multifacetted nature of the influence of interface colour on consumer decision making in retail environments. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2011;     

Colour appearance shifts in two different‐sized viewing conditions

This study assessed the effect of size on colour appearance, using a colour matching paradigm where two sizes were presented in a setting similar to a normal colour selection interface. Twelve colours sampling the entire range of the colour spectrum were chosen as target stimuli. The target stimuli consisted of either a large (30° by 50°) or a small (0.5° by 0.5°) test field displayed on a cathode ray tube (CRT). In the experiment, a set of small colour samples consisting of the target and its neighboring colours was presented on the screen. Fifty‐seven participants were asked to pick a colour from the sample set that appeared to exactly match the target. Results in CIECAM02 showed a consistent increase in the apparent brightness (Q) but some decrease in saturation (s) for the larger field. Hue shifts were observed to form a systematic pattern. We noticed a discernable trend showing that, for targets of bluish or purplish colour hues, the accuracy of colour matching is lower and colour difference is greater in the condition of the large viewing field. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2010     

A comparison of colour appearance for surface colours between outdoor and indoor environments

Psychophysical experiments of colour appearance, in terms of lightness, colourfulness, and hue, were conducted outdoors and indoors to investigate whether there was any difference in colour appearance between outdoor and indoor environments. A panel of 10 observers participated in the outdoor experiment, while 13 observers took part in the indoor experiment. The reference white had an average luminance of 12784 cd/m² in the outdoor experiment and 129 cd/m² in the indoor experiment. Test colours included 42 colour patches selected from the Practical Coordinate Color System to achieve a reasonable uniform distribution of samples in CIECAM02. Experimental results show that for both outdoor and indoor environments, there was good agreement between visual data and predicted values by CIECAM02 for the three colour appearance scales, with the coefficient of variation values all lower than 25 and the R² values all higher than 0.73, indicating little difference in the three dimensions of colour appearance between indoor and outdoor viewing conditions. Experimental data also suggest that the observers were more sensitive to variation in lightness for grayish colours than for highly saturated colours, a phenomenon that seems to relate with the Helmholtz-Kohlrausch effect. This phenomenon was modeled for predicting perceived lightness (J′) using the present experimental data. The new J′ model was tested using three extra sets of visual data obtained both outdoors and indoors, showing good predictive performance of the new model, with an average coefficient of variation of 14, an average R² of 0.88, and an average STRESS index of 14.18.     

Colour preference for Taiwanese floral pattern fabrics

A psychophysical experiment was carried out to investigate factors affecting colour preference for Taiwanese floral pattern fabrics, as a case study of object colour preference. A total of 175 test images of Taiwanese fabrics were used as the stimuli presented on a calibrated computer display. The images were generated on the basis of 5 existing Taiwanese fabrics, each manipulated into 35 images by changing the fabric colour. The 35 colours were selected to cover the most frequently used colours for existing Taiwanese fabrics. The 175 test images were assessed by 76 Taiwanese observers in terms of 9 semantic scales, including Taiwanese style/non‐Taiwanese style, Japanese style/non‐Japanese style, splendid/plain, traditional/modern, active/passive, warm/cool, heavy/light, like/dislike and harmonious/disharmonious. The experimental results reveal two underlying factors: “Splendidness” and “Harmony.” The like/dislike response was found to highly correlate with harmonious/disharmonious, but have poor correlation with Taiwanese style/non‐Taiwanese style. The study also reveals several factors affecting colour preference for Taiwanese fabrics, including the interaction effect of colour and pattern, observer's general liking for the object, and the effect of user experience. These findings can help develop a more robust, comprehensive theory of object colour preference. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 41, 43–55, 2016     

Colour here,there, and in‐between—Placemaking and wayfinding in mental health environments

Colour design in mental healthcare environments is acutely significant. Sensory acuity may be impaired through age, illness, or heightened stress and anxiety. While research has played a role in the development of guidance on the use of colour in such environments, this article suggests that this tends to be followed in a dogmatic, risk‐averse manner and predominately without professional design input, leading to monotonous and under‐stimulating environments. The article reports on two case study projects by the authors, involving user participation and student volunteers. These colour design installations provide examples of practice‐led applied research within occupied healthcare facilities. The article discusses the significance of site‐specific colour design in relation to place‐making and wayfinding with reference to previous research that considers the role of colour as part of the everyday experience of all users, in contrast to an approach focused solely on the behavior of patients. It concludes that colour design knowledge developed and applied through “real world” live projects, involving students as part of their architectural education can address some of the shortcomings of laboratory or staged colour research.     

Colour meaning and context

This study compares semantic ratings of colour samples (chips) with those of the same colours applied to a variety of objects. In total, 25 participants took part in the colour‐meaning experiment, and assessed 54 images using five semantic scales. In Experiment 1, simplified images (coloured silhouettes) were used whereas in Experiment 2 real images were used. In this article, the terms “chip meaning” and “context meaning” are used for convenience. Chip meaning refers to the associated meanings when only isolated colour chips were evaluated while context meaning refers to colour meanings evaluated when colours were applied to a variety of product categories. Analyses were performed on the data for the two experiments individually. The results of Experiment 1 show relatively few significant differences (28%) between chip meaning and context meaning. However, differences were found for a number of colours, objects, and semantic scales i.e., red and black; hand wash and medicine; and masculine‐feminine and elegant‐vulgar. The results of Experiment 2 show more significant differences (43%) between chip meaning and context meaning. In summary, the context sometimes affects the colour meaning; however, the degree to which colour meanings are invariant to context is perhaps slightly surprising. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 42, 450–459, 2017     

Experimental modeling of colour harmony

This study investigates colour harmony in visual experiments in order to develop a new quantitative colour harmony model. On the basis of new experimental results, colour harmony formulae were developed to predict colour harmony from the CIECAM02 hue, chroma, and lightness correlates of the members of two‐ or three‐colour combinations. In the experiments, observers were presented two‐ and three‐colour combinations displayed on a well‐characterized CRT monitor in a dark room. Colour harmony was estimated visually on an 11 category scale from ?5 (meaning completely disharmonious) to +5 (meaning completely harmonious), including 0 as the neutral colour harmony impression. From these results, mathematical models of colour harmony were developed. The visual results were also compared with classical colour harmony theories. Two supplementary experiments were also carried out: one of them tested the main principles of colour harmony with real Munsell colour chips, and another one compared the visual rating of the new models with existing colour harmony theories. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2010.     

Assessing the performance of a spectral reflectance estimation method based on a diffraction grating and a spectroradiometer

Constant improvements in digital cameras have made it possible to use these devices for colour acquisition and reproduction at an advanced level. It is known that a colour match for all observers when changing illumination can only be achieved by matching spectral data. Obtaining spectral data from digital camera RGB values could provide a new way of using the digital camera as a spectrophotometric tool or as a high‐quality colour‐capturing system that is required in more demanding applications. In the present study, two spectral reflectance estimation methods were examined – the Imai–Berns method (ImaiBerns) and the spectral‐sensitivity‐based method (SpecSens). The purpose of the research was to simplify the procedure of the SpecSens method by using a diffraction grating and a spectroradiometer instead of a monochromator, and to compare the results with those of the ImaiBerns approach. Obtained spectral reflectance estimates were evaluated using the root‐mean‐square error and ?E₀₀ metrics. Results of the research show that the ImaiBerns method was superior to SpecSens, most likely because the former method does not require knowledge of the camera spectral sensitivities, which often introduces errors into reflectance estimation calculations. Both methods were successful in predicting black, brownish, and dark patches, as indicated by a low root‐mean‐square error, as well as unsaturated pastel, pink, or skin colours, which produced low ?E₀₀ values. On the other hand, many of the patches with a low root‐mean‐square error also exhibited high ?E₀₀ values, while bright, nearly‐white patches were characterised by a high root‐mean‐square error.     

Experimental determination of the laws of color harmony. Part 4: Color preference and the color harmony content

In 1956, we decided at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics to start a large‐scale experiment on color harmony. The experiments and the processing of the experimental results have been completed in 2006. These experiments, described in this article, form a study of how much are people, participating in the experiment, influenced by their own personal color preference in judging the harmony content of a composition. These experiments have utilized the results of former (1958–1969) color preference experiments and the system of color preference indexes, which were developed by the generalization of those results. Within the framework of these experiments, conducted between 1998 and 2006 there were 24 compositions, shown to the participants, at first one by one, then in pairs and at last in groups of six. They had to assess the harmony content of the compositions and award a score on a scale between 0 and 10. Each composition possessed a specific amount of harmony content according to the rules of color space, based on the Coloroid harmony threshold and verified by former experiments. In these experiments the number of elementary observations were 135 568. The people participating in the experiment were approximately equal number of men and women, from the age group between 10 and 70 years. During processing, by using the color preference numerical indexing system, we compared the results of those experiments with the color preference of a similar age group, by using color compositions, identical to the ones used in the present experiment. We have found that the sensation of the color harmony and its intensity have a strong relation to how the observers relate to colors and also their color preferences. The sensation of color harmony is also influenced by the gender and the age of the observer. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 34, 210–224, 2009     

Evaluation of colour‐difference formulae for different colour‐difference magnitudes

Most of the colour‐difference formulae were developed to fit data sets having a limited range of colour‐difference magnitudes. Hence, their performances are uncertain when applying them to a range of colour differences from very small to very large colour differences. This article describes an experiment including three parts according to the colour‐difference magnitudes: large colour difference (LCD), small colour difference (SCD), and threshold colour difference (TCD) corresponding to mean ΔE values of 50.3, 3.5, and 0.6, respectively. Three visual assessment techniques were used: ratio judgement, pair comparison, and threshold for LCD, SCD, and TCD experiments, respectively. Three data sets were used to test six colour‐difference formulae and uniform colour spaces (CIELAB, CIE94, CIEDE2000, CAM02‐SCD, CAM02‐UCS, and CAM02‐LCD). The results showed that all formulae predicted visual results with great accuracy except CIELAB. CIEDE2000 worked effectively for the full range of colour differences, i.e., it performed the best for the TCD and SCD data and reasonably well for the LCD data. The three CIECAM02 based colour spaces gave quite satisfactory performance. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2012     

Ordinal scale based description of colour rendering

Perceived colour differences of 17 test colour samples (uniform standalone patches) were evaluated visually between a test and a reference light source on three visual scales. Two graphical rating scales (a greyscale‐anchored colour difference scale and a similarity judgement scale) and a five‐step ordinal rating scale (excellent, good, acceptable, not acceptable or very bad colour rendering) were used. The experimental setup included tungsten halogen, gas discharge, fluorescent, and white LED light sources at two correlated colour temperatures, 2700 and 4500 K. There was an inverse relationship between similarity judgement and visual colour difference results. Each category of the five‐step ordinal rating scale had a characteristic mean visual colour difference value. Visual colour differences correlated best with the recently developed CIECAM02‐UCS colour difference metric. Latter metric was used to predict the observers' ratings of visual colour differences on the above five‐step ordinal rating scale. From the predicted ratings of 17 test‐colour samples under the test light source, a new ordinal rating scale based colour rendering index (RCRI) was defined and compared with previous colour rendering indices. RCRI correlated well with both the mean visual colour differences and the mean similarity judgements. Despite the significant interobserver differences of the visual assessment of colour differences, the RCRI method showed an overall performance of 73% in terms of good predictions of the rating categories. Validation experiments with complex still life (tabletop) stimuli are currently underway. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2010