Li-Chen Ou

This article classifies colour emotions for single colours and develops colour-science-based colour emotion models. In a psychophysical experiment, 31 observers, including 14 British and 17 Chinese subjects assessed 20 colours on 10 colour-emotion scales: warm–cool, heavy–light, modern–classical, clean–dirty, active–passive, hard–soft, tense–relaxed, fresh–stale, masculine–feminine, and like–dislike. Experimental results show no significant difference between male and female data, whereas different results were found between British and Chinese observers for the tense–relaxed and like–dislike scales. The factor analysis identified three colour-emotion factors: colour activity, colour weight, and colour heat. The three factors agreed well with those found by Kobayashi and Sato et al. Four colour-emotion models were developed, including warm–cool, heavy–light, active–passive, and hard–soft. These models were compared with those developed by Sato et al. and Xin and Cheng. The results show that for each colour emotion the models of the three studies agreed with each other, suggesting that the four colour emotions are culture-independent across countries. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 29, 232–240, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20010

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

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 aim of this study is to investigate the impact of physical appearance attributes (in terms of color and shape) on our affective feelings of 2D and 3D objects. Twelve colors were studied, each consisting of 12 two-dimensional and 12 three-dimensional shapes. This resulted in 144 2D and 144 3D color-shape combinations. Each color-shape combination was assessed using 20 emotion scales in a viewing cabinet by a panel of observers with normal color vision. The results show that there are five underlying factors of these 20 scales, i.e., “activity,” “weight,” “heat,” “softness,” and “complexity”. The first three factors were mainly related to color and the other two were linked with shape. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 34, 75–83, 2009.

Abstract This study investigates how a holistic color interval, ie, the nondirectional color difference between a pair of colors in a CIELAB uniform color space, influences perceived color harmony. A set of 1035 test color pairs displayed on a CRT was evaluated for the ...

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

An additive approach to predict harmony for three-colour combinations is proposed in this article. It is hypothesised that a three-colour combination can be seen as a combination of three colour pairs, each generating a harmonious/disharmonious feeling that can be quantified by a two-colour harmony model the authors previously derived; the average of these three harmony values can then determine the overall harmony. To establish whether this hypothesis was valid, two psychophysical experiments were conducted in the United Kingdom and the United States. Experiment 1 used 6545 three-colour wheels as the stimuli, presented individually on a calibrated cathode ray tube display. Under the same viewing conditions, Experiment 2 used 111 interior images as the stimuli. In each experiment, 20 British and 31 American participated as the observers. An additional test was undertaken, with 64 observers taking part, to address the issue of large sample size as encountered in Experiment 1, using 90 colour wheels selected randomly from those used in Experiment 1. The experimental results show close agreement between the observers' response and the harmony value predicted by the proposed method, with a correlation coefficient of 0.71 for the 6545 colour wheels, 0.93 for the 111 interior images and 0.88 for the additional 90 colour wheels. The results support the additive approach as a simple but robust method for predicting harmony in any three-colour combinations, which may also apply to combinations generated by any number of colours. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2011