Why are mental health institutions so white? Or is that only in movies?
In: Biology
Medical buildings were often painted white because if a white surface isn’t sparkling clean (i.e. has blood, vomit, mucus, whatever) on it, it’ll show and they can do something about it. It’s slightly harder to maintain cleanliness on textured or multicolored surfaces.
So when they started to build psychiatric hospitals, at first they built them like any other hospital.
Later, they decided that since there aren’t a ton of body fluids spilling in a psych hospital (on a good day) they could afford to make the environment a little more pleasant.
If you’re doing a hopeful movie where somebody actually gets better from psych treatment (It’s Kind of a Funny Story), you shoot it in a modern setting where there’s color and art and stuff like that. If you want a “psychiatry is torture” story like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you’d probably go with a harsh-white building.
(Or were you talking about the employees? If so, oops.)
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