The development of an emotion model based on colour combinations

The purpose of this study was to develop an emotion model based on the colour combinations popularly used for interior coordination in Korea. To summarize, the emotion model had the following features: (1) It consisted of three axes named as ‘soft–hard’ (first dimension), ‘light–heavy’ (second dimension) and ‘splendid–sober’ (third dimension). (2) The emotion descriptors were categorized into nine emotion groups and matched with the representing colour combinations. (3) This emotion model had a one-to-multiplicity correspondence structure between the colour combination and the emotion descriptor, whereas most of the previously developed models included only one-to-one correspondence. (4) It was observed that the emotion variable only showed a relatively consistent tendency within the space of the emotion model as the difference in the tone of colour combinations increased or decreased. The emotion model developed in this study can be used as a basis for the determination of local consumers’ emotion on colour combinations to support colour planning in the industrial design field relevant to interior coordination.