Gender Difference in Colour Preference of Lighting: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Gender difference has been widely reported in many research fields. However, in the topic of colour preference of lighting, such an issue has not aroused much attention. In this study, therefore, three groups of visual experiments with different illuminance (E) levels (50 lx, 200 lx, 600 lx) were conducted which investigated the preferred correlated colour temperature (CCT: 3500 K, 5000 K, 6500 K) for six single-coloured decorative artificial bird-shaped objects (red, green, yellow, blue, white and black). Twenty subjects, ten males and ten females, were invited to respond with their visual colour preference of the experimental objects. The aim of this work was to investigate if gender difference exists when the observers judge objects with different colours under different E-CCT conditions. The results indicate that there is significant difference between males and females for the 200 lx and 600 lx conditions, especially for the cases with higher CCTs (5000 K and 6500 K). In addition, it was found that under certain E-CCT conditions the preference ratings of males and females for certain colours were obviously different. Similarly, for some scenarios the subjective ratings from observers of the same gender also varied with object colour.