How Does Lighting Affect Your Mood?
Improving the look of your lights by Nashville Electrician is an incredibly powerful tool that can influence your mood. Bright light is energizing, while dim light can relax you.
Lighting affects our circadian rhythms which in turn impacts mood. Studies also show that lighting can directly affect cognition and mood. The type of light you use in your home and workplace plays a big role in how you feel.
Brightness
Studies have shown that brightness has a direct effect on mood. Brighter lighting tends to stimulate and make you feel alert, whereas dim lighting creates feelings of calm or relaxation. The color of the light also impacts your mood, as certain colors can intensify emotions or dampen them. For instance, red hues can make you feel happy and positive, while blue and other cool colors can increase feelings of depression. Brighter hues can also influence your heart rate and other physical responses.
In addition to its effects on your mood, brightness can also affect your ability to concentrate. If you have a difficult time concentrating in bright environments, try moving to a darker room or installing more light-filtering blinds.
The color of the light also has an impact on your mood, although this may be less obvious than its brightness or intensity. A few studies have indicated that the color of light can impact your mood in a more direct way, without first affecting circadian rhythms and other factors. This type of direct effect may be the result of signals sent to the brain via non-image forming cells in the retina (e.g., ipRGCs).
This is important to note because it means that if you want to change your mood, you could simply change the type of light in a room or building. For example, if you find that working in fluorescent lighting makes you feel irritable or tired, switch to natural light or an LED that emits a warm yellow glow.
Bright lighting at night, such as from electronic devices and conventional work lighting, can throw off our circadian rhythms and cause us to have trouble sleeping. This can also exacerbate certain mental health conditions, such as insomnia or anxiety.
Natural sunlight is a true mood-booster and has been shown to reduce symptoms of depression in people with SAD. If you can’t work in the great outdoors, position your desk near a window to get some natural light during the day. In addition, bright light therapy boxes (also called dawn simulation) can help treat SAD and provide an effective mood boost.
Color
Color has long been a tool for conveying mood and emotion in art and design. Whether you’re painting a portrait of a loved one or setting the scene for a romantic film, it can help you capture exactly how you want your audience to feel. Basic color theory suggests that warm colors like reds, oranges and yellows evoke feelings of happiness, optimism and energy while cool colors like greens and blues are soothing and calming.
In recent years, research has shown that color may have a broader impact on mood than previously thought. For example, light-sensitive hormones in your brain regulate important functions such as your circadian rhythm, pupillary light reflex and sleep propensity. Several studies also have linked light exposure to mood, alertness and performance.
The type of light you use and the color of that light can affect your mood. If you’re feeling stressed, a room full of bright, vibrant lights can make you more anxious and increase your heart rate. Conversely, a dimly lit space with cool colors and soothing sounds can reduce your stress and help you relax.
Lighting can be used to create specific moods and atmospheres in spaces such as restaurants, retail stores, offices and homes. For instance, a restaurant may have warm lighting to encourage socialization and excitement while an office may have cooler, more subdued lighting to promote productivity and concentration.
Light can also have an impact on your appetite. A 2015 study published in the scientific journal Appetite found that people exposed to blue light tended to have less of an appetite. However, this effect only lasted for about an hour and was found to be most significant in men.
While we’re not suggesting you paint your whole home in shades of blue, we do think it’s worth experimenting with the color of your light sources. The right shade can soothe your stress, boost your creativity and even help you get a better night’s rest.
If you’re struggling with depression, anxiety or stress, try incorporating more blue and purple into your life. You can start by trying out a few simple techniques, such as listening to music with immersive blue and purple hues or staring at a ceiling filled with shimmering nebula clouds.
Time of Day
Many people feel their best and work most efficiently in natural daylight. However, modern living and working often necessitates that we spend much of our time indoors under artificial lighting. Whether it is fluorescent, LED or another type of artificial light, we all know that this type of lighting can make us feel tired, depressed, and sluggish. It can also be difficult to focus and concentrate. This is especially true for people who suffer from depression or who have ADHD.
Luckily, the effect of different types of lighting on our mood can be modified with a few simple changes in the environment. For example, using warmer lighting in the morning and cooler lights in the evening can help regulate our circadian rhythms and create a more productive mood. The same can be done by placing a light therapy box in the office or home to simulate the effects of sunlight.
Researchers are currently exploring what light characteristics (irradiance, color, and duration of exposure) play a role in mood regulation. Current evidence suggests that a specialized class of photoreceptors called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) is involved in the light-driven modulation of mood and behavior. These photoreceptors are well known to mediate non-visual responses such as the pupillary light reflex and circadian photoentrainment, but new research indicates that they can directly influence mood.
Although it is believed that the primary cause of this effect is that illumination levels can desynchronize circadian rhythms, leading to an indirect impact on mood, it is increasingly apparent that specific light wavelengths and colors can have direct impacts on mood. These direct effects may be mediated by different pathways in the brain, but are still under active investigation.
Interestingly, the same research that has shown that particular light wavelengths and colors can affect your mood shows that the intensity and saturation of those colors can also have an impact. For instance, a study showed that highly saturated red hues can stimulate your emotions while blue hues can have a calming effect. This is why movie theaters use blue or cool lighting to enhance the action and suspense scenes and warm or yellow light to create a more relaxing atmosphere for viewers.
Improving the look of your lights by Nashville Electrician is an incredibly powerful tool that can influence your mood. Bright light is energizing, while dim light can relax you. Lighting affects our circadian rhythms which in turn impacts mood. Studies also show that lighting can directly affect cognition and mood. The type of light you…