It’s that time of year again: teacher social media is awash with pictures of classroom displays.
One trend you might have noticed in some of those photographs is the use of neutral colours - raffia fabric in place of coloured backing paper, brown lettering and cream-coloured mounts for images.
Neutral displays are all the rage, but not just because they look good on Instagram. Some believe they have a calming effect on classrooms and place less strain on pupils’ cognitive load compared to brightly coloured displays.
But does the colour of your school’s displays - or, for that matter, the classroom walls - actually make a difference to either of these things?
One widely-cited study, conducted in 1978, seems to suggest it might. Research scientist Alexander Schauss asked male prisoners to stare at large squares of pink and then blue paper with their arms outstretched. He then tried to force their arms back down and found this easier to do after they’d stared at the pink paper.
Schauss named the colour the prisoners looked at “Baker-Miller Pink” (after two of his colleagues), and concluded that this specific shade reduced physical strength, and therefore aggressive behaviour. As a result, prisons across the world have been painted this colour.
However, in 2014, when European researchers repeated the experiment, they questioned the methods of the original study and instead ran a highly standardised and controlled experiment. Their results did not replicate the original findings.
This is not the only example of colour being explored as a tool to improve the design of public buildings. In 2016, American researchers conducted a literature review, which looked at the impact of colour in healthcare settings, and found that certain colours can reduce medical errors, promote a sense of wellbeing, reduce stress and increase staff morale and productivity.
Despite these positive findings, the researchers warn that there are still “ambiguities” to address. They conclude that “colour is a complicated concept that is intertwined with lighting conditions, individual biases and the perceived suitability of the colour to specific uses”.
“While there is a growing body of literature indicating that colour impacts healthcare outcomes…the overall body of knowledge remains fragmented and incongruous,” they add.
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General research into the effects of colour is mixed, then. But what about studies specifically conducted in schools? These are slim on the ground, although there are a couple that offer some insights into the use of colour in education settings.
In 1995, Ellen Mannel Grangaard, a researcher at the University of Nevada, looked at the effect colour and light had on 11 six-year-olds. The pupils were placed in two different rooms; one had white walls and cool-white fluorescent lights, while the other had light blue walls and full-spectrum Durotest Vita-Lite lights, which are designed to mimic daylight.
Grangaard found that when students were in the classroom with white walls, they displayed 390 off-task behaviours, in comparison to 310 in the classroom with blue walls: a decrease of 22 per cent. She also found that pupils’ mean blood pressure readings were 9 per cent lower in the blue classroom when compared to the white classroom.
We should be cautious about these findings. The sample size was extremely small and, as the lighting was also changed, it is impossible to attribute any impact to the change in colour alone.
However, another study conducted in 2019 by academics in Iran also looked at the impact of colour in the classroom - this time examining the effect red walls have on student emotions and behaviour.
The study included 70 female high school students in Shiraz, Iran, during the 2017-18 academic year. All 70 were asked to conduct an aggression questionnaire, before being split into two groups. One group spent 12 weeks in a classroom painted red, the other in a classroom painted white. The students were then given the same questionnaire for a second time.
The results showed that the group who were in the red classrooms had increased signs of aggression, including verbal aggression, physical aggression, anger and hostility.
Classroom displays: does colour matter?
Again, this study looked at a small sample of students, in a particular context, so we should be hesitant to draw any overarching conclusions. However, in 2015, Professor Peter Barrett and colleagues conducted more extensive research on colour as part of the Clever Classrooms project, which looked at the design of 153 classrooms from 27 primary schools.
They found that “when viewed as a functional factor impacting on learning”, “large, brightly coloured areas rated poorly, as did white walls with few colour elements”.
Put simply, the extremes of both - completely neutral or completely colourful - weren’t found to be effective for learning.
Having three walls painted a light colour, and one wall in a brighter colour, supplemented with colour in furniture like desks and chairs, however, did seem to aid learning.
One reason for this might be because the limited use of colour strikes the optimal level of stimulation to support pupils’ levels of concentration.
As teacher and researcher Michael Hobbiss explained in a recent article for Tes: “I find it helpful to imagine attention as a pint glass that we always have to fill. If we don’t fill it with task-relevant information, then the remainder will automatically be topped up by other stimuli from the environment.”
When it comes to colour specifically, Barrett and colleagues offer some advice on achieving the “mid-level of stimulation” that is needed “for an effective learning environment”.
Their report states that teachers should start by assessing the colour elements in place in their classrooms that cannot be easily changed, before making a decision about how much additional bright colour to introduce into elements like wall displays. The aim here, they suggest, should be to “increase stimulation against a muted background, or calm the feel if it is already rather bright”.
So, could this be the magic formula, then? Could, say, three neutral displays offset by one brightly-coloured display be optimal?
Barrett stresses that it’s not quite that straightforward, as, ultimately, the impact of colour is down to personal preference. “Every child is different, and what is functionally conducive to learning will differ from child to child,” he says.
But while there are no hard and fast rules here, the evidence suggests that if you’re planning to go neutral for your displays, it might make sense to not be too committed to that aesthetic.
As Barrett puts it: “What matters is to get the balance right.”
