Abstract
As Korea has rapidly entered the aging society, the Korean government and academia are currently undergoing many researches on senior citizens. There also has been an increase in senior citizens' awareness on the importance of spatial designs that reflect the newly emerged needs brought out by their psychological and emotional changes as well as their physical aspects. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to propose a model for senior citizens' image preference to be adopted in future developments for senior-friendly spatial designs. A literature review and a questionnaire survey were implemented as research methods. The questionnaire survey was conducted at two senior welfare centers located in Seoul and Ansan and two disparate senior colleges, on the subjects of 86 senior citizens aged 60 and older. 7 styles of Romantic, Classic, Country, Modern, Natural, Casual, and Traditional were chosen for the study and the realms to apply the image preference were divided into Space, Element1 and Element2. For Space, its subcategories have been restricted to living room and bedroom while color, furniture and lighting for Element1 and material, pattern and props for Element2. Survey results were statistically analyzed for the correlation among socio-demographic factors of senior citizens, spaces and the elements. The study result showed that older age and men tended to prefer the modern style than younger age or women, and younger women preferred the romantic style. For the color preference in Element1, older men preferred the classic style while women preferred the romantic style. And, for the furniture preference, men with higher income preferred the natural style while women preferred the romantic style. For the pattern preference in Element2, younger people preferred the casual style and it showed that the housing type was the main reason for their preferences. Therefore, the image preference according to their age and gender shall be taken account of as the most important factors when designing environments for senior citizens.