Never underestimate the power of good lighting fixtures. Their capabilities expand beyond illumination serving as an attractive piece of furniture, they’re a potential mood changer. Whether looking for fixtures for your home or office, you can select lights that invoke a certain feeling or mood. Both natural and artificial light can influence your circadian rhythm, influencing levels of alertness and focus. If you are looking to install fixtures in a room to fit a specific ambience, perform a certain task, or support the well-being of your guests, then you have to mindfully select the right color temperature. Learn about the unspoken laws of mood lighting and the most effective ways to integrate color therapy into your home below.

Before diving right into the nuances of selecting the correct lighting for your home or office, we’ve got to go back to basics, to color psychology. The truth is that colors can be transformative elements in regulating your psychological and physical well-being. Though research in the area is still growing, it’s a topic that has been shown to influence individual experiences, cultures, emotions, and behaviors. 

To break it down, let’s look at lighting according to each color temperature: 

Red: This color is associated with courage, passion, energy, anger, and danger and can evoke strong emotions. Exposure to red is known to raise your pulse, heart rate, and levels of alertness. Green is a calming color that symbolizes growth, peace, and comfort. It is strongly associated with nature and is linked to relaxation and pain alleviation. 

Yellow: The sunshine color is linked to happiness, positivity, creativity, and warmth. If used correctly, it can create a cozy atmosphere that inspires creativity and helps stimulate the nervous system to create a sense of cheerfulness. 

Blue: Often, blue provides the opposite effect of red, helping foster a sense of tranquility and reducing anxiety. Yet certain dark shades of blue might also emit feelings of sadness. 

Purple: Purple elicits a peaceful and calming mood. This color is often used in meditation spaces and is thought to help encourage more restful sleep. 

White: White replicates daylight, helping with mood enhancement and productivity levels. In lighting, white integrates all the colors on the spectrum, adding a feeling of balance and neutrality. 

The usage of color temperatures to influence moods is nothing new. You can trace their importance back to the time of the ancient Egyptians. They also have a strong presence in Eastern medicine, such as chakras- different forms of energy in the body linked to specific colors.

There’s no fixed rule for home lighting temperatures. It depends on the aesthetic, function and mood you’re trying to create. If you’re wanting to cast a certain ambience, it’s essential you have the right balance of color temperatures such as warm, neutral or cool running from 2000-4500k . Anything outside of this range is more suitable for an intensely lit work environment.

Warm colors have a light color range between 2000-3000 kelvins (k) creating a soft, relaxing ambience.

These colors are great for infusing energy into certain tasks like food prep, reading or ironing. They range between 3100k-4500k and provide a sense of clarity and energetic vibe to your room.

Cool colors hold the highest color temperature ranging from 4000-5000 kg. These light fixtures are very bright and have an effect on the intensity of a blue or red hue they create.

You’ll want to consciously select fixtures that complement the style and ambiance of each intended room. One of the best ways to do this is to create different lighting levels using ambient, task, and accent. Experimenting and integrating various types of lighting can help invoke a distinct mood and ambiance.

Every room must include ambient lighting, this helps give a balanced illumination to a room. Ambient lighting is synonymous with natural light and can make you or your guests feel more cheerful and energetic. Pro Tip: Whenever possible, try to include as much natural ambient light as possible from overhead light sources such as windows or skylights. If you can’t, we suggest using wall sconces for chandeliers. 

On the contrary, if you want to induce a feeling of alertness or focus, task lighting is the most suitable. This type of lighting helps you perform certain tasks, such as reading, cooking, sewing, and other detailed work.

Accent lighting plays a powerful role in elevating the mood of your guests, especially if you have a favorite piece of artwork, architecture, or furniture in your home you want to highlight. It can add to the coziness and reduce negative moods if installed correctly. 

Dimmer lighting gives you the power to regulate the moods around you according to different times of the day. Perfect for bedrooms, it allows you to keep it shining brightly in the early morning to get ready or lower it in the evening, helping you drift off to sleep. 

To recap, lighting fixtures play a key role in helping create a mood you’re trying to manifest. Before buying, sit down and think about the ambiance of each room in the home you’re trying to create. Consider your furniture, aesthetic, and function before selecting appropriate fixtures. At MOD Lighting, we have an extensive range of sophisticated fixtures—dimmer, task, ambient, and accent—to embody a specific mood or ambiance. You can browse fixtures by room here. Do you have a specific mood in mind? Speak to our specialists; they’ll happily recommend fixtures that will align.