“What can you bring to your setting to create beauty and comfort – to feed the senses, create a ‘special’ place which belongs to the students, help students to feel a sense of worth, create joy and build hope (Horsman, 2000)?”
A good start to designing a learning environment is to think about catering to each of the senses. This will help “bring the whole person to learning” – mind, body, spirit, and emotions. Light and color have been proven to have a powerful effect on our inner feelings. As explained before, softer lighting generally creates a feeling of safety and warmth, whereas the intense lighting of fluorescents can make a person feel exposed and uncomfortable. For those with epilepsy, fluorescent lights even cause seizures. In Brady’s research of physical responses to light and color, she writes:
Evidence from studies collected by Dr. John Ott and Jacob Liberman suggest that the eyes are not merely for vision alone, but are actual extensions of the brain and receptors of light for the vital functioning of our body’s nervous and endocrine systems. (Brady, website)
Given this evidence, it is apparent that colors influence our emotions and perceptions towards an environment. For example, we chose to paint our classroom a soft orange or peach color. Peach is a color that “lends a cheerful mood to a room” and “flatter[s] skin tones and harmonize[s] with many other colors (Simpson, 2004).”
A color that “flatters skin tones” and creates “harmony” amongst the other colors is the type of welcoming environment that we wish to create. It complements the diversity of skin tones in our classroom, as well as our mission to create a sense of place and harmony within our program.