Effects of Lighting Color, Illumination Intensity, and Text Color on Visual Performance

This study investigated the effects of lighting color, illumination intensity, and text color on visual performance. Experiment 1 conducted character identifying test and Experiment 2 conducted reading comprehension test. Results of experiment 1 indicated that all the three independent variables had significant effects on mean percentage of character identification. Mean percentage was best under white light (67.05%), 500 lux (69.85%), and blue text (69.22%). Results of experiment 2 indicated that the lighting color and text color had significant effects on mean answer for reading comprehension. Mean answer were higher under white light (6.68) and blue text (6.97). In general, the texts with primary colors had better mean percentage and mean answer than the gray. According to the results, white light, normal ambient illumination and a text with primal colors seemed to be the optimal conditions. If the yellow light is necessary, using blue text will provide better visual performance than gray text. Further, the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient indicated that short-term visual task measurement might be suitable to evaluate the visual performance.