Interior prospect and refuge

Prospect and refuge theory has usually been applied to landscapes but recent work suggests that it could also be applied to interiors. This article reports two experiments, covering 14 environments and 97 respondents, in which five hypotheses regarding prospect, refuge, and comfort were tested: H1: the transition from small, dark, and low to large, light, and high and vice-versa; H2: the transition from dark to light vs vice-versa; H3: the transition from low to high vs vice-versa; H4: the transition from small to big horizontally vs vice-versa; and H5: width. Results varied. The effect of width on comfort was substantial (r = .35); effects for the other hypotheses were either subtle or contrary to expectations.