Colours and Concert-Halls

Chen and Cabrera studied experiences in concert halls; select surfaces were different colours for the various conditions tested.  Study participants rated “loudness, reverberance, and their visual and auditory preference for multiple virtual reality scenes of a concert hall with various colours and with a music excerpt of various levels of gain and reverberation time.

Results show that colour has little or no effect on loudness and reverberance compared to changing gain or reverberation time.

However, colour does affect visual and auditory preference. . . .

Of the five colours tested, red is the most-liked colour for the selected concert hall, followed by neutral [white], blue, and yellow, while green is the least liked colour. The colour preference is related to the commonly used colour styles of existing halls. . . . For each [coloured] element, the saturation and brightness values of the colours and the texture of the materials were constant between scenes, while only hue was changed (apart from the neutral scene, for which saturation was set to 0%).”

Yuxiao Chen and Densil Cabrera.  2021. “The Effect of Concert Hall Color on Preference and Auditory Perception.”  Applied Acoustics, vol. 171, 107544, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2020.107544