Abstract
Currently, subway is becoming a major part of transportation and living environment in large cities such as Seoul or Hong Kong. As the numbers of subway lines and stations increase, visual cues indicating places are needed for users with various destinations, and environmental colors as well as line colors can be expected as effective informations for easy wayfinding. The purpose of this study is to understand the current color applications in terms of creating regional differentiation and informing subway lines in the transfer stations of Seoul and Hong Kong, by field investigation. The investigation has been proceed on 24 transfer stations from February to April, 2009 by taking photos and measuring environmental colors using Minolta spectrophotometer CM-2600d. As a result, regional differentiation in color application appeared generally low in both Seoul and Hong Kong but various 'hues' differing each station are used in Hong Kong, compared to limited use of 'hues' in Seoul, In terms of 'value', the rate of Seoul appeared lightly higher than that of Hong Kong, and the use of medium high rate of 'saturation' of main and secondary colors are shown as a remarkable character of Hong Kong.
