Color in the MEEB

When I think of color and light at home, I think of Amelie

I've recently been studying for an exam that covers the "MEEB", or Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings. The several-thousand-page tome is a notoriously dry textbook on building systems and part of it - believe it or not - reminded me of Apartment Therapy...

The MEEB's section on lighting and color offered up some insights both familiar and new with regard to human responses to color:

In an atmosphere designed to be calm and restful, greens should generally predominate either in illuminant color, object color, or both, except in eating areas, which should be lighted with reds and yellows since cool colors are generally unappetizing.

Yellows and browns emphasize motion sickness, whereas blues and greens tend to the reverse. Warm and saturated colors produce activity; conversely cool, unsaturated colors are conducive to meditation. Cool colors also seem to shorten time passage and are well applied in areas of dull repetitive work.

It seems Amelie's apartment defies some of these characteristics, but the use of color and light in her home is delightful. Her red bedroom is rich and comforting. Her yellow bathroom emphasizes light and cheer, not "motion sickness". How about you? Does your use of color at home pretty much align with this MEEB excerpt? Or, like Amelie, have you disproved many of the textbook concepts?

Film stills: Amelie via Decorology

Comments (7)

I suffer from vertigo, and our condo is predominantly yellow (the motion sickness color). Is there a connection?

I am now contemplating some blue or green stained glass in my office area!

Kitchen and dining room are light brown -- no nausea noted so far. (Maybe you have to already HAVE motion sickness for it to be a problem?)

I don't meditate but my pale aqua bedroom seems suited for it...

Color theory only has limited plausibility in these situations, though...

I've heard of some of these rules before, but I really think they're more related to personal taste. I don't really like cool colors very much, so I wouldn't want them to be terribly present in my home.

I've never been much of a green person, execpt in limited shades and even then, as an accent. Chartreuse is one shade of green I like a lot.

I tend to veer more towards reds, blues and yellows, temper them with browns and oranges, black and white and mid range woods such as teak, walnut etc.

for relaxing I love cobalt blue glass with candles lit within in a darkened bathroom for those long hot soaks I sometimes do.

Realize that we're talking about different things here: color as it's perceived in real life; color as it's used (symbolically) in film -- which are not the same thing.

Also realize that specific colors can signify wildly different things depending on the culture, and at the same time there are some colors that tend to have more or less universal associations.

A symbolic statement in a film like "Amelie" may bear no resemblance to the way an American may use color in a room; vs., say, a Japanese person.

i took a class that required us to bring MEEB to every lecture. they gave us pop quizes on content in the book, specific enough that you needed the book for reference! i wrapped the book in an A&F shopping bag so i had handles and could carry it like a bag instead of trying to fit it in my backpack