Effects of patient room wall colors on user perception

Color, an important parameter in architectural designs, is a critical element that determines the identity of a space and affects the psychological and personal impressions of its users. Space color affects its users directly and indirectly, emotionally, aesthetically, and physically. In this context, the color scheme in patient rooms is a special issue that should be considered more carefully, considering the physical and psychological state of its users and the time they spend in the room. Patients are affected, consciously or unconsciously, by environmental colors during their stay in the room. Therefore, these colors should relax and calm the patient and contribute to the patient feeling more positive. Considering that humans can distinguish up to two and a half million colors in the context of type, value, and saturation, which colors will have a more positive effect on patients is an issue that needs to be meticulously researched.In this thesis study, research was conducted to understand what colors should be used in patient rooms and the effects of colors on patients. Within the scope of the study, similar studies were researched and an experiment was designed considering certain parameters. In this study, carried out with real hospitalized patients, a hospital patient room was visualized and twelve chromatic and two achromatic (white and gray) colors selected from the Munsell Color System were applied to the walls. Fourteen visualized wall colors were shown to the patients on the computer screen and administered to the patients through a questionnaire containing the five-level "Semantic Differentiation Scale" with thirteen different adjectives and the ten-stage "Likert Scale" measuring the degree of liking. In the final stage of the survey, patients were asked, "What Colors Would You Like the Patient Room to Be? Can You Describe?" to gather their opinions about the wall colors they would like in the patient room. The data obtained from the study were evaluated and meaningful results were obtained. In the introduction part of the thesis, the literature summary, the scope of the thesis, and the hypothesis of the thesis are stated. In the first chapter, general information is given on color, the perception of colors, their role in the perception of space, the use of color in architectural spaces, and the function of space and the use of color. In the second part, patient rooms and the color scheme and use in patient rooms are focused on. In the third section, the research methods used to evaluate the effects of patient room color schemes on users are explained and the findings of the survey are included. In the conclusion section, the results obtained in the findings were evaluated and analyzed with the data in the literature.