The Impact Of Environmental Color On Thermal Comfort In The Cold Climate Zone Of China

A few earlier investigations in the field of energy saving have studied that some athermal factors,including demographic characteristics,background,environment interaction and cognition,can affect a person’s thermal sensation or thermal comfort actually.Meanwhile,color,which is everywhere in space,is a common element in architectural design.Studies in design science,psychology,medical science have proved that color has a significant impact on subjects physiologically and psychologically.Moreover,it is a complicated elment related to gender,age,cultural background,architecture design,semantics,cognitive preference and so on.Then,whether color can affect thermal comfort and create certain energy-saving potential or not?This study assessed the effect of environmental color on thermal comfort through a series of experiment in a climate chamber.Twenty-one experiments were conducted in 7 environmental chambers with different color of walls(white、extreme red、light red、extreme yellow、light yellow、extreme blue and light blue).The size of the chambers were kept the same(6m*6m*5m)and 32 people(16 males and 16 females)were tested.In each environmental chamber,subjects were exposed to three ambient temperature levels(25℃、27℃ or 29℃ in summer and 18℃、20℃ or 22℃ in winter).Questionnaires on thermal comfort,psychological evaluations and mood were distributed and accomplished after subjects reading or studying for 1/2 hour in each experiment.Also,skin temperature was measured.The main conclusions are: Firstly,in space with different colors,subjects’ psychological evaluations have significant differences,embodies in differences among color temperature,feelings of aesthetic form,feelings of tension,pleasure or calm and overall satisfaction.Secondly,at the same temperature,the subjects’ average skin temperature has no obvious differences physiologically in chambers with different colors.Thirdly,hue have some practical significance in energy saving.A blue-colored or white-colored room may have more advantages over a red-colored or yellow-colored one in summer,owing to a higher neutral point and temperature limit.However,in winter they become unfavourable factors in energy saving.Finally,colors with different value and chroma have different influences on thermal comfort.Since in light red and light yellow space,comfortable temperature limits and neutral points of temperature are higher in both summer and winter.A light red-colored or light yellow-colored room may have more energy-saving potential than an extreme red-colored or extreme yellow-colored one in summer.While in winter an extreme red-colored or extreme yellow-colored rooms have advantage over light-colored ones.Besides,in light-colored rooms subjects can endure a wider 80% of dissatisfied temperature range.