Analyzing and predicting colour preference of colour palettes

A palette composed of multiple colour patches can express lots of information. This study aimed to explore the factors that influenced colour palette preference, including colour attributes and colour differences between colour patches. A new attribute called Delta_Order for calculating the colour difference of a palette was presented, which fully considered the colour difference and the placement. In order to comprehend colour palette preference intuitively, a prediction model of palette preference was proposed based on lightness, chroma and the new metric Delta_Order. Two psychophysical experiments including analyzing and validating experiments were conducted. Fifty observers were invited to evaluate the colour palette preference. The results indicated that lightness played an important role in colour preference, but colour preference was not related to hue angle. For Delta_Order, there was a significant negative correlation between the new metric and preference score since the Pearson correlation coefficient was −0.801. This meant that observers preferred the palettes with low Delta_Orders. According to the validating test, it confirmed that the proposed prediction model had a good stability. The predicted trends were consistent with the true results, and the scores were similar to each other. These analysis results had a certain guiding significance in design and industry about colour.