Whitewashing the Wards? Colour, Health, and Victorian Hospital Interiors

The representation of the white interior of hospitals as cold and dehumanising forms a resurfacing trope in the chromatic history of health institutions well into the twentieth century, but it was first developed when whitewashing walls became the predominant practice in sanitary hospital design during the mid-nineteenth century. Mounting critiques of the white hospital interior precipitated the entry of various colours during the 1870s as part of the wider transformation and diversification of British hospitals. This development was tied to the widening institutionalisation of illness, reflected in a growing number of middle-class hospital patients and expanded typologies of hospital spaces. Hierarchies of class and gender, changing convalescent health cultures and sanitary reform initiatives further shaped the diversification of colour within hospital spaces. By positioning the transformation of hospital interiors within histories of Victorian colour, we can see how colour meanings and language were shaped by experiences of illness and, reciprocally, how experiencing colour informed concepts of health.