Gender and place experience

Men and women can experience spaces in slightly different ways from time to time:

• Women have a better sense of touch than men, in technical terms, they are more “tactically sensitive” than men. This is because basically everyone has the same number of nerve endings on the end of their fingers, for example, and since women are often shorter/smaller than men, for women those nerve endings are closer together, so women may note changes or problems with textures that men would not.
• Visually, men are more sensitive to fine detail and items moving quickly, while women excel at differentiating different colours generally, particularly various shades of red.
• Women and girls prefer redder colours than men, although both men’s and women’s favourite colours are most likely to be blue—as a result, females’ favourite colours are tended toward pinks and purples, for instance. Men usually prefer greener shades of blues, etc.
• Women are more responsive to changes in colour saturation and brightness than men. Read this article, to learn more about how colour saturation and brightness influence our emotional state.  Similarly, for colour pairs, women prefer pairs that are very light or very unsaturated more than men do.
• Viewing the colour pink brings thoughts of optimism for mind, but only women looking at pink surfaces actually being to feel more optimistic.
• Men are more likely to be colour blind than women, with the design consequences discussed in this article.
• Women are better at seeing variations in visual textures (for example, dirt on a surface) than men.
• It’s true, women have a keener sense of smell than men and are more likely to make decisions based on smells than men and be emotionally responsive to scents.
• The smell of rose is perceived more positively by women than men and the smell of wood smoke seems more pleasant to men than women. Also, men rate the scents of anise and menthol more positively, as more pleasant, than women.
• Men from 20 to 69 are more likely to be hard of hearing than women but are also generally better able to locate a sound in a space than women, so they’re the ones to ask what’s squeaking in that annoying way.
• Women are more comfortable speaking to people sitting or standing in front of them, men, in contrast would prefer to sit or stand next to whomever they’re speaking with.
• Men become most uncomfortable when they’re closer to another person than their society feels is best, women, however, are most tensed by being further away from someone than they’d prefer to be.If a space will primarily be used by men, make sure seats aren’t too close together and if women will be prime users, position seats so they’re not too far apart.
• Women tend to prefer slightly warmer air temperatures than men.
• When asked to design homes, the houses developed by women tend to have more shared spaces than those created by men as well as more curved walls and to be smaller than homes designed by men.