Visual Attention and User Preference Analysis of Children’s Beds in Interior Environments Using Eye-Tracking Technology

Visual attention plays a critical role in users’ cognitive evaluation of safety and functionality in interior furniture, particularly for children’s beds, which are inherently safety-sensitive products. This study adopts an integrated approach combining eye-tracking experiments and questionnaire surveys to examine users’ visual cognition and preference patterns toward children’s solid wood beds under controlled viewing conditions, focusing on material attributes, bed typologies, and key structural components. The results indicate that natural solid wood materials with clear textures and warm tones attract higher visual attention, while storage-integrated bed designs significantly enhance exploratory gaze behavior. At the component level, safety-related elements such as guardrails and headboards consistently receive the earliest visual attention, highlighting their cognitive priority in safety assessment and spatial perception. Overall, the findings support a dual-path visual cognition mechanism in which bottom-up visual salience interacts with top-down concerns related to safety and usability. This study provides evidence-based insights for material selection and structural emphasis in children’s furniture design within interior environments. The applicability of the conclusions is primarily limited to adult observers under controlled visual conditions.