The effect of concert hall color on preference and auditory perception

Abstract Going to a concert involves both visual and auditory senses, which have been found to influence each other in many ways. The visual design of a concert hall contributes to the visual experience of seeing a concert, and color is one of the most obvious elements of the visual design. While some studies have reported that color affects vehicle loudness, the influence of concert hall color on the auditory experience of seeing a concert has been little-studied. In this study 30 volunteers evaluated loudness, reverberance, and their visual and auditory preference for multiple virtual reality scenes of a concert hall with various colors and with a music excerpt of various levels of gain and reverberation time. Results show that color has little or no effect on loudness and reverberance compared to changing gain or reverberation time. However, color does affect visual and auditory preference, and these are positively correlated and mutually influential. Of the five colors tested, red is the most-liked color for the selected concert hall, followed by neutral, blue, and yellow, while green is the least liked color. The color preference is related to the commonly used color styles of existing halls.