The Role Of Lighting And Color In a Classroom

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According to Mike Kennedy, “Colors in a classroom can affect how students behave and perform” (48). The classroom colors play an important role in creating a home-like environment for children. In a well-designed classroom young children need a sense of control and the environment should enable the children to engage and stay focused during their self- directed play. In my opinion the color and lighting are important for designing a high quality learning environment specifically for infants and toddlers. The bright primary colors can create an environment which can feel over stimulating to children as well as with adults. The neutral background will provide a calming atmosphere in a classroom. The colorful toys and also materials with pictures on the walls stand out against a warm neutral background. Having a neutral background helps the children focus and it visually discriminates the objects. The early childhood programs need to have a color scheme for each room so that it enables a sense of unity, uniformity, and calm. Preferably everything in the room would be consistent with this scheme: carpet, tile, walls, curtains, and equipment. However, usually enough of one color can give the room a sense of uniqueness and uniformity. The entire room should be balanced. Wardle explains “The carpet needs to be fairly dark (to resist dirt), the tile light to offset the carpet…Do not use carpets with lots of colors in them; tile should also be a single color-usually white. It can be marbled” (6). Wardle said good carpet colors would be dark grey, and dark brown. The colors picked for the color scheme depend on personal preference, lighting in the room, and existing carpet and tile colors. Louis Torelli and Charles Durrett suggest designers “Use low-pile, neutral-colored, anti-microbial carpeting (to prevent the growth of fungus and mold)” (5). One should
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