Wall color of TOS Sickbay - was it grey? Or green?

[Koloth TOS]

In sickbay we have the room with the sickbeds, the room with the examination bed, McCoy's office and the laboratory. I am interested in the room with the sickbeds. The walls seem to be painted in gray color (as were the other rooms of sickbay), but sometimes they look green, seldomly purple. Were the walls always gray and just the lighting made them look greenish or purple?
Both photos from Space Seed - courtesy of startrekpropauthority.com

Photo courtesy pinterest

 

[Takeru]

The walls were gray and the colors done with lighting like you assumed, this was intentional so that they could more easily redress sets and give them a very different look with different lighting.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I feel we've lost something in the modern era, when you could just blast a wall with purple lighting to convince people it's another deck or different area.

In-universe, are the walls themselves meant to be coloured differently or is it the lighting??

 

[Koloth TOS]

I feel we've lost something in the modern era, when you could just blast a wall with purple lighting to convince people it's another deck or different area.

In-universe, are the walls themselves meant to be coloured differently or is it the lighting??

Speaking of sickbay I don't think that the intention of different lighting was to suggest that the scene was in a different room or deck or so. It was always sickbay with the same sickbeds. It think it was just playing around with colors, some people at the time of first airing had color TVs and they must have enjoyed it very much.
I would say that the walls were all gray and the lighting was meant to add a colorful atmosphere.

 

[M'Sharak]

While a lot of the time apparent color is down to what lighting was used on a gray wall, there are a few shots where the wall panels themselves appear to be different colors (or at least the shades don't quite match.)

 

[Koloth TOS]

While a lot of the time apparent color is down to what lighting was used on a gray wall, there are a few shots where the wall panels themselves appear to be different colors (or at least the shades don't quite match.)

Looks like it! (photo courtesy Trekcore).

 

[PatB1974]

In sickbay we have the room with the sickbeds, the room with the examination bed, McCoy's office and the laboratory. I am interested in the room with the sickbeds. The walls seem to be painted in gray color (as were the other rooms of sickbay), but sometimes they look green, seldomly purple. Were the walls always gray and just the lighting made them look greenish or purple?
Both photos from Space Seed - courtesy of startrekpropauthority.com

Photo courtesy pinterest

I always wondered what the purpose of the colored lighting accents on the walls was.

 

[Firebird]

Sickbay had a kind of sickly green-yellow color in Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Real glad they changed that before production started up on the series.

 

[scotpens]

Probably meant to be hospital green.

 

[Metryq]

I'd bet the reason was to cater to color television. Yet the splashes of color, light and shadow—even across the actors—had a chiaroscuro effect, and just made the shots more pleasing to look at than flat, diffuse lighting.

A few years later, Space: 1999 did something similar with the Moonbase Alpha interiors. The walls already had the geometry to do interesting things with light. But the walls themselves also lit up! This made for futuristic, diffuse lighting. Although the usual tools of key, fill and backlight were also used. After the pilot episode, the normally white-only wall lights started to take on colors. However, the usage never suggested something built-in to Alpha for purposes of crew psychology and well-being. The colors were used to accent the mood of scenes.

 

[Qonundrum]

I'd bet the reason was to cater to color television. Yet the splashes of color, light and shadow—even across the actors—had a chiaroscuro effect, and just made the shots more pleasing to look at than flat, diffuse lighting.

A few years later, Space: 1999 did something similar with the Moonbase Alpha interiors. The walls already had the geometry to do interesting things with light. But the walls themselves also lit up! This made for futuristic, diffuse lighting. Although the usual tools of key, fill and backlight were also used. After the pilot episode, the normally white-only wall lights started to take on colors. However, the usage never suggested something built-in to Alpha for purposes of crew psychology and well-being. The colors were used to accent the mood of scenes.

^^this

Color television was new, RCA was selling color TVs, and Star Trek definitely helped sales: https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/star-trek-the-original-series-color.html
Nobody understood the show, but nobody was going to throw away nearly $500,000 in unusable sets, and with the coincidental release of color broadcast signals with 1965 being the first year that color would be prevalent (and exponentially more by 1966), it was yet another big reason to push forward and take advantage of the new technology in this futuristic show. Marketing 101, Psychology 101, 101 101, you name it.

Any half-baked cynicism or any other notions of sales pitching aside, TOS was there when color tv was new and the use of color palette to juggle so many colors without feeling bombastic is an impressive artistic accomplishment no matter what. Especially as the costumes used red/gold/blue (primary pigment colors), or red/green/blue (primary lighting colors). So thought was put behind TOS. Which took people, time, and money, contrary to modern belief because the show is said to look cheap. (put TOS up anything else in the mid-1960s and it was anything but cheap, but before I digress...)

(Note: The season 2 cast photo from the aforementioned site, in lesser hands, would be as gaudy and florid as anything could get. But that photo, as balanced, is a genuinely fantastic presentation of balancing it all.)

Now fast forward a decade, when tv shows stopped irradiating the CRT with every hue and saturation possible because the honeymoon ended. Even shows like Wonder Woman where episodes featuring aliens or future-era humans had sets bathed in different colors to differentiate their locale for 20th century Earth and, by 1977, color TV was anything but new, so Trek had an unintentionally lasting effect where other shows, like Batman, had not.



In-universe, the use of color to sooth or excite is too easy a given and I'm hardly a major in psychology. Quite the contrary... But quarters could be backlit in whatever hue for whatever reason, a trend that disappeared later on. And trends can come and go and return and go again.