A WORLD OF COLOUR Are design choices influenced by geography? David Brailsford of Altro explores
the influences that climate and light along with culture may have on surface design within healthcare settings around the world.
The healthcare sector has traditionally posed challenges for designers and architects when it comes to specifying materials that can be used on floors and walls. Products and finishes have to meet stringent criteria, including enhanced safety requirements, hygiene of the highest standards and legislative obligations. Thankfully, we now have a huge range of options that satisfy these requirements, whilst offering far more flexibility when it comes to aesthetics.
Unsurprisingly, the advent of greater design choice - more extensive colour palettes, designs and finishes - brings about a melting pot of creativity and style, even in a sector such as healthcare where function must remain the highest of priorities. As a global company, Altro’s teams around the world report on trends and developments in their home markets, and these influence the way we plan and development our products of the future.
22 | HEALTHCARE
Getting the colour palette right is a hugely important part of any new product introduction, made even more complex if those products are to be used in different countries across the world.
THE SCIENCE
OF COLOUR Colour temperature, in its most simplified definition, is a method of describing the colour characteristics of light, and is measured in degrees Kelvin. Designers are well versed in considering colour temperature when it comes in interior lighting, using warm or cool lighting to create mood or ambience as well as providing artificial light of the correct colour temperature helping those with visual impairment. We see this played out on a much bigger stage
with nature’s variations in colour temperature around the world.
Essentially, colours are not fixed. In reality, an object’s appearance results from the way it reflects the particular light that is falling on it. For example, an apple we see as red appears red under
“Getting the colour palette right is a
hugely important part of any new product
introduction, made even more complex if those
products are to be used in different countries across the world.”
www.tomorrowscontractfloors.com
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