A Room to Relax

Although bright light might boost cognition, recent work suggests it counteracts relaxation and openness—effects that might be more important than alertness in some settings. In a 2006 study counselors interviewed 80 university students individually in either a dim or a brightly lit counseling room. The students questioned in the dim room felt more relaxed, viewed the counselor more positively and shared more information about themselves than those counseled in the brighter room did. The findings suggest that dim light helps people to loosen up. If that is true, keeping the light low during dinner or at parties could foster relaxation and intimacy.

A room’s contents can be similarly soothing—or the opposite. Neuroscientist Moshe Bar of Harvard Medical School showed subjects photographs of various versions of neutral objects, such as sofas and watches. The examples of each item were identical except that some had curved or rounded edges, whereas others had sharp, squared-off perimeters. When asked to make snap judgments about these objects, subjects significantly preferred those with curves. Bar speculates that this preference exists because we associate sharp angles with danger. “Maybe sharp contours are coded in our brains as potential threats. Filling a living room or waiting room with furniture that has rounded or curved edges could help visitors unwind, ” he says.

Furniture choices and seating plans can also influence human interaction. A better plan to encourage interaction, researchers found, is organizing furniture in small groupings throughout the room. The psychologists from Germany and Sweden examined seating in a different setting. Over eight weeks and more than 50 lessons, the researchers rotated a class of fourth-grade students between two seating arrangements: rows of desks and a semi circle of desks around the teacher. The semicircle configuration increased student participation, boosting the number of questions pupils asked. Other studies suggest that putting desks in rows encourages students to work independently and improves classroom behavior.

Carpeting can also grease the social wheels. In hospitals, carpet increases the amount of time patients’ friends and families spend visiting, according to a 2000 study led by health care design expert Debra Harris. Such social support may ultimately speed healing. Of course, carpeting is much harder to clean than traditional hospital flooring—and may present a health hazard in some settings—so it may not be appropriate for places such as an emergency room, where there is high patient turnover and plenty of mess. But rooms, buildings or wards that are home to long-term patients, such as assisted-living facilities, may benefit from carpets.