Studies have shown that vivid reds and yellows are better for study than blues and greens. Credit: iStock Struggling with that last minute exam-prep? Curtin researchers are here to save you, finding that brightly colored rooms can boost your concentration levels. 
 
 While students say they prefer to study in environments with pale colors—which they feel are most relaxing—their level of concentration is actually higher when surrounded by vivid reds and yellows, according to recent research. 
 
 Student participants were asked to read a passage and answer multiple-choice questions adopted from the American SAT university entrance test in rooms with six different color schemes—pale and vivid blue, red and yellow. 
 
 Their reading comprehension scores were significantly higher in the vivid red and yellow rooms. 
 
 "Bright colors can support students' learning performance by positively affecting psychological and physiological states," says lead author PhD candidate Aseel Al-Ayash. 
 
 Several past studies have indicated the colors red and yellow are more stimulating than blue and green. 
 
 For example, student pulse rates increased in red and yellow conditions, but decreased in blue. 
 
 "If the reading tasks are difficult, the vivid color conditions may increase arousal to optimal levels" she says. 
 
 This is consistent with the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which proposes that arousal improves performance up to an optimal level, with additional arousal causing a drop off in performance. 
 
 Research suggests blue study environments are better for creative work. Credit: iStock 
 
 What about those calming blues? 
 
 Ironically, two-thirds of participants believed vivid red wasn't a suitable color for a study room, associating the color with depression, discomfort, annoyance and elements such as danger. 
 
 But given their improved learning outcomes, perhaps a bit of discomfort (aside from last minute cramming) is what they need. 
 
 "In general, most participants believed that pale colors with high whiteness would be appropriate color schemes in learning environments, because they are considered calm and relaxing," Ms Al-Ayash says. 
 
 "However, the calmness and relaxation aspects may not help students to be alert and active. 
 
 "They performed better in the vivid color conditions, because these colors have arousing properties that stimulate neural activity." 
 
 "If the task is boring, a red condition may stimulate individuals and enhance their performance," Ms Al-Ayash says. 
 
 It seems red and yellow may be the future of study areas, with Curtin and other WA universities expressing a keenness for the work. 
 
 "I found they are interested to make improvements in their learning spaces design particularly in study areas in their libraries to create a suitable atmosphere for studying," Ms Al-Ayash says. 
 
 Explore further: Feeling blue and seeing blue: Sadness may impair color perception ||||| I just took a brief hallucination break with a colleague. We stepped into a supply closet, dimmed the lights, sat down, and watched one another’s faces morph into those of lionesses. I cried the whole time. Then we went back to work. 
 
 We were testing out a theory, reported in IFL Science, that staring into someone’s eyes for ten minutes can have LSD-like hallucinogenic effects, and found that, whoa: Indeed it can. 
 
 Giovanni Caputo, a researcher at the University of Urbino in Italy, paired up 20 people, had them stare into one another’s eyes in a dimly lit room for ten minutes, and reported on the results in Psychiatry Research. Caputo’s subjects reported some pretty strange effects, including out-of-body experiences and seeing monsters or dead people. 
 
 So when my co-worker Lauren Brown arrived this morning, I asked her: “Can I look into your eyes for ten minutes?” 
 
 “I thought you’d never ask,” she laughed. 
 
 I set about approximating the conditions of Caputo’s study, which was a bit like creating a make-out room for a game of “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” only in my workplace. 
 
 I dragged two chairs into a large closet and with a small desk lamp behind some boxes as the only source of light, made the room dim enough that I couldn’t perceive color, but was still able to discern details a few feet away from me. I put my phone on airplane mode and brought in Lauren. We sat down and set the timer. 
 
 Dramatization of real events. (Quartz/Mia Mabanta) 
 
 Lauren has a fairly intense gaze that’s symmetrically framed by striking, full eyebrows. The moment we sat down in the dark, that was the first thing that struck me, and then the giggles, which she got too. After a few long seconds, we settled into our places. I watched the smile fade from Lauren’s face, and felt sucked into her eyes. The bottom of her face started to elongate, and the highlights on her cheeks started to look like some kind of war paint or tribal markings. It occurred to me that she looked like a Native American chieftain. 
 
 Then my phone fell off the camera bag it was sitting on, and smacked onto the floor. I broke our stare to pick it up and restart the timer. It had been about 30 seconds. We started again. 
 
 Now we settled more quickly, and again I felt totally sucked into Lauren’s eyes, and very calm. I’m not much of a meditator—my earnest attempt with Headspace was rather short-lived—but I quickly fell into what I would call a meditative state. Thoughts floated in and out of my brain, but I felt like I was observing them, more than actively thinking them, like: Oh, that’s interesting. Now I’m wondering whether Lauren engages in facial contouring. Her cheekbones look so bright. 
 
 Very early on, my left eye started to water. A tear filled it up and rolled down my cheek. I brushed it away, and then worried that may have distracted Lauren. Then another one came, and I just let it roll all the way down to my neck. Then my right eye started too. Was I forgetting to blink? I was blinking, but the tears didn’t stop. They didn’t feel like emotional tears, but more like the ones that stream down my face on windy winter days. 
 
 But then, wait a minute. Was Lauren crying? It looked like her eyes were welling up, and it seemed like the corners of her mouth turned down. I felt there was a lot of emotion behind her eyes, and I just kept staring into them. Lauren has survived breast cancer, and it occurred to me that this could be a space where intense thoughts could creep in. 
 
 A few minutes later, she giggled. 
 
 Lauren’s chieftain face never came back, but her nose and mouth started to disappear, and were soon replaced with the muzzle of a large cat, like a mountain lion. (Seriously.) The whites of her eyes looked bright in the darkness, still framed by her eyebrows. 
 
 The timer went off. 
 
 “That went really fast,” I said. 
 
 “That went so fast!” she agreed. 
 
 We turned on the lights and stayed in the closet for a debriefing. 
 
 “That was really fucking weird,” I said. She agreed. I asked if she noticed my eyes watering the whole time. She hadn’t. I told her I didn’t feel emotional at all, but the tears just wouldn’t stop. It made me think of the Marina Abramovic performance piece, The Artist is Present, in which many of participants cried when faced with the silent, sitting Abramovic. 
 
 I told Lauren it looked like she was welling up a couple of times. She said she wasn’t at all. “I think you were projecting,” she said. 
 
 Then she told me why she laughed halfway through our sitting. “You started to look like a weird little animal!” she said. 
 
 “YOU started to look like an animal!” I shrieked. “A lion!” 
 
 “You were a lion!” she yelled. “A lioness,” she corrected herself. 
 
 We continued our very scientific analysis this way (unlike the subjects of Caputo’s study, who answered questions on a five-point scale, presumably not shrieking in a closet). 
 
 Lauren also said my face faded into a black silhouette, surrounded by blue light—and that at one point, it occurred to her that my face, in the dark, looked like death. I tried not to take this personally. “But not like you were dead,” she said. 
 
 We emerged from the closet, and I looked at Caputo’s study in detail. Other subjects, it turned out, had reported seeing animals (30%) or the face of someone of a differing race (7%). A striking 75% said they saw the face of a monster. No one reported projecting emotions onto their staring partner, but that may be because Caputo didn’t ask. 
 
 Still, Lauren and my experience was probably more than a little different from those who participated in Caputo’s study—and not just because we were in a supply closet. We sat down as friends and colleagues who are comfortable with one another, not strangers. It made me think of The New York Times story (paywall) about falling in love with a stranger by answering personal questions while gazing into their eyes. 
 
 I wouldn’t say Lauren and I fell in love, but we did share something quite cool: A perception-shifting experience; a quiet space to sit with our thoughts, away from the internet; and a lot of laughs afterward. What’s more, it only took ten minutes, it was free, and we have no hangover to show for it. 
 
 I highly recommend finding a friend and a dark room, and taking ten minutes to try this out. Who knows what could happen?
– Is your kid having a hard time concentrating on her homework? It might be time to repaint her room, according to a new study out of Australia. Science Network WA reports researchers found that brightly colored rooms—specifically ones that are red or yellow—help students study better. “The vivid color conditions may increase arousal to optimal levels,” study author Aseel Al-Ayash says. Researchers put participants into six differently colored rooms, had them read a passage, then asked them questions about it. The subjects in the bright red and yellow rooms got significantly more correct answers. This despite two-thirds of them thinking red would be a bad color for a study room. They believed pale rooms would be better for concentration because they were calmer. "However, the calmness and relaxation aspects may not help students to be alert and active," Al-Ayash says. Instead, the brighter rooms "stimulated neural activity." The study could have an impact on the way schools and universities paint their facilities. But if you may want to keep red out of the kitchen if you're trying to lose weight: WebMD notes it may have a stimulating effect on appetite. (Another study found concentrating makes you go deaf.)