Küster Dental Weblog

Every time you walk into a room you have an emotional reaction.  The room makes you feel something.  This may be happy, excited, calm, cold, or any variety of reactions.  If you’ve never been in that particular room before, then your memories of times spent in the room won’t be influencing your reaction. Thus, the feeling you experience comes from the use of three components:  Color, Light, and Texture. 

Colors impact our mood.  I think most school kids are taught that some colors are warm colors and some are cool colors.  The warm colors (red, yellow, orange) arouse and stimulate, while the cool colors (blue, green, violet) calm us down.  My high school used yellows and oranges in the halls to excite us and help us speed from class to class during the five minutes between classes.  Then, the classrooms were painted in blues and greens to calm us down and get ready to learn.  I visited the school a few years ago and found that the entire school had been repainted using the school colors of blue and white in the halls and tans in the class rooms.  Obviously, whoever was in charge of the new color scheme missed the point of the original one.  Makes me wonder if kids still make it to class on time?

Similar to colors, lighting also impacts our moods.  Soft, dim lighting we find calming.  Bright, intense lighting excites us.  Lighting can be used to create accents and draw our attention to specific objects or areas of interest.  Think of the emergency pathway lights in an airplane that are designed to guide us to safety.  Lighting can be one of the most dramatic factors in creating a space.  Additionally, we must pay attention to the proper lighting for the tasks at hand.  Without proper lighting eyestrain can occur, which may lead to stress and headaches.  Staff that has responsibilities for interacting with patients may have a difficult time being cheerful and friendly if the lighting is working to make them irritable.

Lastly, texture is brought into the picture to round out the interior space and impact emotions.  The materials chosen on a project help dictate whether an interior looks sleek and polished or rather cozy and earthy.  Think about the how you feel when you walk across a marble floor versus a slate one.  What images go through your mind in each instance?  Does walking on marble feel more formal and cold?  Do you think of a bank or insurance company or maybe even a lawyer’s office?  With the slate floor’s uneven surface, do you feel more relaxed?  Maybe you think of the entryway you had in your home growing up or the floor in a lakeside cabin.

Now, think about sitting down in a worn, leather wingback chair versus a wood and cane ladder-back kitchen chair.  Which makes you feel more at home and relaxed?  By controlling the textures of the floors, walls, and furnishings, the emotional reactions your patients, as well as you and your staff are experiencing can be shaped.  Taken together with the colors and lighting, the mood for the entire practice can be designed.

Over the next few weeks, I will continue to explore the five elements of Interior Branding, of which, Color, Light, & Texture is the first.  Next week we will look at Human Interaction.