Wood is Good in Interior Design - Research Findings Fridays

Wood is good in interior design - we sort of intuitively know this already.  At the moment, I'm very drawn to wood and leather textures ... maybe because winter is approaching and I associate these materials to be warm, rich, comforting and supportive. Do you?  Frank Lloyd Wright said about wood, " ... universally beautiful to Man, the most humanly imitate of all materials."

The study I am discussing today examines the effects of wood on interpersonal perception in interior design, specifically office design.  Basically, how does wood in an office affect other peoples' perceptions of the person who occupies that office?  

Ridout, B. G., Ball, R. D., Killerby, S. K. (2002). Wood in the Interior Office Environment: effects on interpersonal perception. Forest Products Journal, 52(9).

Participants (69 total, 38 male, 31 female) were shown images in two conditions.  The first involved images of office spaces without an office occupant.  They were asked to make judgments about the people who might inhabit the offices.  The second condition involved images of offices with the office occupants in them.  Again, they were asked to make judgements about the people who inhabit the offices.  In both cases the judgements were ratings on a bipolar scale of the following qualities: not highly successful - highly successful, not very professional - very professional, dishonest - very honest, not caring - very caring, not very creative - very creative.  The office occupants included superimposed images of three men and three women (waist up only so that no judgements could be made on stature or height - all were dressed in professional business attire) in order to examine the effects of gender.

Indeed, they found that the presence of wood in the interior decor of an office leads to an overall more favourable first impression of the office occupants, regardless of their gender.

They also found that many of the participants were using cues from the office environment to derive information about its occupant - which suggests that the environments we inhabit can affect peoples' perceptions of us.  One problem with this idea in this particular study, is that the participants were all fifth year architecture students (!! don't you love when scientists do that?).  This poses an issue because maybe architects have a higher tendency to put value on the physical characteristics of a space than another group of people. (Duh!) The authors state that the participants were blind to the fact that this study was examining the effects of wood - which helps, but still.  However, the idea that environments (spaces, places, rooms, offices, homes, etc.) affect other peoples' perceptions of us has been largely examined - and the results of this study are in line with the rest of the research.  So all the interior designers reading this can let out a sigh of relief - our jobs are still indeed important ;)

This study makes me want to go do a little research to see what's been found about how wood affects the mood or well being of actual occupants of a space instead of the perceptions of outsiders.  Both are equally important. Both are interesting.  

Do you have any thoughts or comments about this?  Any information to add or share?

I leave you with some eye candy.

Jamie Bush & Co.

Tribeca loft by A+1 Design Corp Studio via Trendland.

via Freshome / via Grassroots Modern

in the Cascading Creek House by Bercy Chen Studio via Contemporist.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,