Natural and Artificial Light Can Support the Life You’ve Planned

The light bulbs and fixtures you use to illuminate your world can influence your well-being and cognitive performance.

Certain colors and intensities of light indoors encourage our minds to work in particular ways, and other combinations are best in settings where different sorts of thoughts and behaviors are desired.

And sometimes darkness is wonderful. Think about being in a fragrant meadow on a moonlit night, for example, or trying to fall asleep after a long day. Most of our life is lived in light, however.

Natural light, daylight, is a sort of magic elixir that does great things for what goes on in our minds. It has a powerful, nearly primordial effect on our well-being. Glare-free natural light boosts our mood, creativity, and also our cognitive performance, for example. More positive moods are good things because, besides their obvious implications for how we go about our life, when we’re in a better mood, our ability to solve problems and get along with others, for example, improves, and all of that’s great for not only us but the world in which we live.

While it’s important to incorporate natural light into our lives, we should keep out its all too frequent companion–glare. Many window coverings, such as sheer curtains, let in natural light but cut glare. Careful use of shiny and highly polished surfaces can also help minimize glare. For instance, glare can be a problem on glossy floor tiles but may not be on matte ones under the same lighting conditions.

Artificial light fills the gap when natural light is insufficient for whatever we’re up to, for whatever reason, at night, for example.

Circadian lighting systems project varying sorts of light throughout the day, light that changes in the same ways that natural illumination does. That helps our bodies maintain their circadian rhythms, keep stress levels in check, and optimize well-being.

The color of artificial light indoors varies a lot. Light bulbs can be warmer or cooler; the “temperature” of the light from any particular bulb is usually described on the package it comes in as warmer or cooler. For your home or office, you should choose bulbs that gently tone generally whitish light and not the garish red, blue, or green ones made with tinted surfaces that noticeably distort colors in a space. Halloween-type bulbs can do particularly undesirable things to skin tones, all skin tones, stifling pleasant mingling.

Warm lights are great for creating a cozy, relaxing atmosphere, one where we have a good time socializing with other people and are apt to think more creatively, while cool lights are best for times when we need to feel alert or active and when we need to really concentrate. Do your taxes in cool light, write poetry and hang out with friends in warmer light. Dimmer lighting also is more relaxing and better for casual hanging out than brighter lights.

It can be handy to equip some lamps in a room with warmer light bulbs and some with cooler ones and to turn on either the warmer or cooler set, depending on the activities planned.

To reap their full benefits, put warmer light bulbs in tabletop and floor lamps and cooler ones overhead, in ceiling-mounted fixtures, for example. Warmer light generally is found lower in the natural world, at the horizon during sunrise and sunset, for example, while the sun overhead at noon projects cool light.

Lighting, natural and artificial, has an important influence on how we think, feel, and act in the rooms we use throughout the day. Design needs to support a variety of different lighting options to boost our well-being.