Learning the Dynamic Processes of Color and Light in Interior Design

Abstract

Interior environments and their design are profoundly influenced by how designers integrate color and light with form and space. In our increasingly global world, new lighting technologies are changing our perception of color and light and subsequently our interrelationships with one another and with interior space. This alters the choices that we have as designers when we make both color and light decisions. Traditional light and color theories are being challenged with new lighting approaches that are complex, dynamic, and that are changing people's immediate experiences within spaces. Currently, new light technologies alter our perceptual relationships with people and forms, as light, its spectral color, and the forms its affects are more interactive and modulated in real time. Usually, in interior design coursework, students learn about color and light as static theories that they are then asked to apply within the interior design of spaces in subsequent design studios. Through a presentation and examination of the course “Color and Light in Interior Design,” this paper proposes considering integrating color and light theories with new contexts of dynamic, integrated human experiences of color and light in interior space. Students acquire learning experiences that integrate theory and practice by understanding the complex interrelationships of light, color, and objects in interior spaces as interactive, and by exploring design concepts in actual environments as a laboratory where they can test theories and their own ideas. The course structure is described and the theories underlying the course goals are explored. Color and light theories are considered in the context of emerging technologies and how phenomenological approaches affect our perceptions and experiences in spaces. Student examples of two of the four course projects are presented as these put theories into practice. The discussion shows that light and color theory, when explored in this way, stimulates both comprehensive and creative responses that integrate new technology with aesthetic theory and functional aspects of well–designed light/color solutions. The integrating of practice into theory stimulates reflective thinking and an understanding of situated contexts in interior design problem solving. The course develops emerging necessities of understanding dynamic color/light concepts that contribute to broadening interior design applied knowledge.

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