Investigating the relationship between colour and visual perception in campus circulation spaces: a data-informed exploratory framework

This study investigates self-reported associations between colour and visual perception in a high-circulation public space on a university campus. Focusing on attributes including attention, visibility, perceived safety, aesthetic contribution, mood, and perceived wayfinding effectiveness, it explores how different colour alternatives are perceived across a set of everyday spatial-experience criteria, with the aim of informing evidence-based colour-design discussion rather than establishing causal or behavioural claims. The empirical study involved 151 undergraduate students from the Department of Interior Architecture at Istanbul Aydın University. The investigated setting was the heavily used outdoor circulation area known as the Blue Stairs. The theoretical framework draws on colour-in-context theory to examine associations between warm, cool, and neutral colour alternatives and users’ self-reported perceptual responses. Data were collected through an online, image-based questionnaire in which participants viewed eight digitally simulated colour alternatives of the staircase and, for each of eleven perceptual attributes, selected the single colour alternative they associated most strongly with that attribute—a categorical, forced single-choice design rather than an independent rating of each colour. Responses were analysed using descriptive statistics, chi-square goodness-of-fit tests, Cohen’s w effect-size estimation, Correspondence Analysis, and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis to explore patterns of association between colour and perceptual attribute. The findings indicate that no single colour was selected consistently across all criteria; instead, different colours were associated with different perceptual attributes. Correspondence analysis positioned red and purple, as an exploratory aggregate-level pattern, closer to attention and visibility, and blue, grey, and green closer to perceived safety, aesthetic contribution, and harmony with surroundings. A complementary hierarchical cluster analysis, with cluster number compared via silhouette coefficients across k = 2–7, found that the two-cluster solution—separating red from the remaining seven colours—achieved the highest silhouette coefficient (0.313), although overall cluster separation was modest. Taken together, these exploratory analyses suggest that the observed colour-selection patterns are structured rather than randomly distributed across perceptual attributes, and that colour may be a useful evidence-informed design variable, offering architects and designers a data-informed starting point for colour strategies in campus circulation spaces and comparable public environments.