Impact of Light and Color on a Customer’s Mood

by Saanya Jain

“The ongoing trend for creative automotive lighting portrays no sign of declining.”

Have you ever wondered why light makes you feel a certain way? Sit in a room bathed in cozy, pleasant and inviting light, and you would immediately find yourself at ease irrespective of your mood. Sit in the same room with loud and harsh fluorescent lights buzzing, and you instantly feel irritated and your teeth may start to grind. These variations in light are determined by the color temperature of the light source.  Color temperature is measured in Kelvins (K) and indicates how warm or cool the color of the light appears. Designing lighting products requires understanding how to balance color temperatures in environments to influence emotions and the consumer experience.

Lighting plays an extremely powerful role in communicating different moods and acts as an instant mood-lifter. According to Architectural Lighting Magazine, natural light — or daylighting (neutral light) — provides the stimulation needed to regulate human circadian rhythms, or the internal body clock. Further studies in this area have found that exposure to bright light (cool light) decreased sleepiness, increased alertness, and improved performance on psychomotor vigilance tasks.  More recently, it was observed that exposure to blue wavelength light activated areas of the brain involved in executive functions; another study found that exposure to blue wavelength light increased activity in areas of the brain like the amygdala and hypothalamus during the processing of emotional stimuli.

Innotec incorporates the impact of color temperature elements when designing and manufacturing lights with their BoardFree technology.  We understand how important it is to select lighting color temperatures that achieve the objectives satisfactory to the consumer, whether it is decreasing the level of stress or inducing a calming, ‘ambient’ effect.  Innotec takes into consideration all these elements to create the perfect light for each product experience.