Room Color Preference Among Babies
Alex Broussard
Auburn University

Author Note: Alex Broussard, Department of Psychology, Auburn University. Correspondence concerning this research should be addressed to Alex Broussard, Department of Psychology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849. Email: akb0031@auburn.edu.

Abstract Beauty is all around humans every day and within that beauty is color. Indeed, as many new parents-to-be are discovering, choosing just the right color to paint their newborn’s bedroom (or if to paint it at all) seems a hugely significant decision. Yet, this choice may in fact truly make a bigger difference in their child’s life than they had ever imagined. While pink or lavender might seem perfect for a girl or blue or green for a boy, we now suspect that there are many more variables than gender, which should be considered. For instance, we know for a fact that a human adult’s perception of color has the ability to influence the emotions they feel at that given moment. Practically speaking, the same could be true for babies and this experiment will help to prove if there is statistical significance regarding the contentment level (i.e., happy quotient) of a baby which varies when placed in a walled room painted with a color, or not. By using a two-group design, 60 babies will be selected as participants. The groups will contain both boys and girls between the ages of 10 month to 15 months. The babies will be randomly selected from the local daycares throughout Lee County, AL. The participants will be matched into two even groups, each containing 30 participants. One group will be placed in a white walled room and one group will be placed in a yellow walled room. Each baby will individually be placed in either room alone for 45 minutes. All participants will be scored using an inter-rater scale to determine if the baby was happier or more distraught at the end of the time interval. If the experiment were to be conducted, one would expect that there would be a statistically significant difference between both groups. The group placed in a yellow walled room will react differently and presumably better/happier in a yellow room. The group placed in a white walled room will be less happy in this setting. This experiment will help determine if bedrooms painted with color rather than no color will make a difference in their emotional state.
Room Color Preference Among Babies Human color vision is an important factor in one’s everyday life. When a couple has a newborn child many people paint the walls of the room based on the gender of the baby: pink or blue. Determining the perfect room color for the majority of babies would not only benefit the couple, but also it will also benefit the child because of the suspect relationship, which exists between specific colors and emotions. One important purpose of color vision is to help humans differentiate objects. In addition, one’s color preferences also contribute to their emotional state, at that given time (Zentner, 2001) and research evidence shows the significant importance of color throughout different age groups. Indeed, Zentner confirmed that a young child is more likely to relate happy expressions on their face with bright colors like yellow, green, or red compared to dark colors such as blue, black, or brown. In addition, both genders showed a preference for bright colors over dark colors with 48 participants favoring bright colors, and 21 favoring dark ones. In other research endeavors, Manav (2006) also found that there was a positive change in emotion associated with both the lightness, as well as the saturation of any exposure to color. Similarly, Ridgers, Stratton, Fairclough, and Twisk (2007) looked at how certain colors played a role in children’s activity level while on the playground. Not surprisingly, Ridgers et al. (2007) discovered that equipment with multicolored markings and physical structures