Education: Color in the Classroom

Are the pupils gloomy, nervous, inattentive? Does the teacher complain of eyestrain? It may be the classroom’s “schoolhouse-brown” paint. Last week New York’s public school system, which adopted pastel shades in 1943, announced a sixth tested classroom color combination: peach and rose.*

Throughout the country more & more schools are applying what paint ads flossily call “the principles of color dynamics.” According to one paint publicist, Joseph C. Thompson of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., “colored surfaces [in] flat, satin, or eggshell finishes . . . medium to light in value [will eliminate the] excessive brightness of the white, and the eye-strain and feeling of monotony induced by too dark colors.”

Thompson recommends: 1) “focal walls”—catching pupil attention by painting the facing wall a darker or lighter value than the side walls; 2) “glare minimization”—equalizing lights and shadows by painting window walls in brighter colors than the opposite walls; 3) “correct room orientation”—cool colors (blue and green) for rooms with west or south exposures; warm colors (red, orange, yellow) for those with east or north exposures.

* Others: blue green and apollo blue, yellow and blue grey, silver grey and dark silver grey, warm cream and copper rose, light green and grey green. All ceilings are either off-white or light cream.