Studies on the Visual Characteristics of Wood Base Materials : Factor Analysis on the Visual Image of the Interior Wall Materials

摘要

In this study the semantic space of the visual or psychological image of the interior wall materials was analysed by means of an improved SD (semantic differential) method. The primary solution obtained by the principal factor analysis was rotated by means of the normal varimax method. The following five factors were obtained-(i) lightness or purity, (ii) naturalness or warmness, (iii) pleasantness or gorgeousness i.e. evaluation factor, (iv) roughness, (V) movement. Using this solution of semantic space, the factor score of the various materials were also calculated and the psychological profiles of the materials were drawn in Fig. 4 (the larger four factors were used). The wood base materials which are often used for interior walls of reception rooms or living rooms have good estimation in the third factor i.e. in this figure the third factor score is small or negative (4th and 5th rows in Fig. 4). The value or lightness of the materials is closely related to the first factor (Fig. 8), and the chroma has weak correlation to the third factor (Fig. 9). The third factor score is related to complicated combinations of color and pattern of the materials, and finding the correlation formulae is the subject for a future study.