Cold and warm coloured classrooms. Effects on students’ attention and memory measured through psychological and neurophysiological responses

Abstract

Mounting evidence indicates that the colour hue of classroom walls influences student performance. However, the effect of this design parameter has not hitherto been simultaneously assessed for two key cognitive learning functions of attention and memory. The objective of the present study is to analyse the impact that warm and cold hue coloured classroom walls have on the cognitive attention and memory functions of university students. To this end, the attention and memory performance of 160 participants was evaluated in 12 warm and 12 cold hue colour settings in a virtual classroom. Their performance was quantified through psychological (attention and memory tasks) and neurophysiological (heart rate variability and electroencephalogram) metrics related to the cognitive functions analysed. The results showed that cold hue colours increase arousal and improve performance in attention and memory tasks; and design guidelines can be established. Furthermore, correlations were observed between the psychological and neurophysiological metrics, which represents an important advance in the neuroarchitecture discipline. The variety of implications of the results makes this work useful for architectural design professionals, researchers, and policymakers working on improving learning spaces.