Creating positive atmosphere and emotion in an office-like environment: A methodology for the lit environment

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107686

Building and Environment

Volume 194, May 2021, 107686

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107686 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Dynamic light settings: new questions emerge about emotion-based lighting design.
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Positive emotions can be cued through the lighting design.
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The effectiveness of lighting design was explained by a real-world experiment.
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A link between perceived atmosphere and human emotion was found.

Abstract

This study investigated whether positive human emotion can be set as a goal through the lighting design process. The study first used a model of emotion – the circumplex model of affect – to characterise four different emotion states (liveliness, relaxation, tense and gloom). Second, five professional lighting designers were recruited and were asked to devise the concepts of each lively and relaxing workspace lit environment. A total of fifteen lighting scenarios with the intention to explore the four emotion states were configured and their emotional effect was investigated through a controlled experiment via a self-reported questionnaire with 42 participants (within-subject design). The results indicate that positive emotions of liveliness can be cued under two lighting settings and that of relaxation under three lighting settings of varying colour temperatures and light distribution. There was also a promising link between perceived atmosphere and human emotion, indicating that atmosphere could be a predictor for human emotion.

Introduction

Light has historically been used as an architectural tool to create different space ambiences (or appearances) and emotions by architects and studies showed that different appearances and emotions induced by the lit environment could influence occupants’ psychological and physiological health and well-being [1,2] Therefore, lighting (design) as an emotional stimulus has been regarded as an important research item concerning human psychological health and well-being [3].

One of the first attempts to investigate the effects of lighting on human subjective impression was conducted by Flynn et al. [4,5]. According to their studies it was suggested that peripheral and non-uniform lighting generated a pleasant and relaxing impression when compared to overhead and uniform lighting on an ‘evaluative’ factor. Studies by Loe et al. [6,7] suggested that average luminance and luminance distribution in the field of view could be design indicators for our perception of visual lightness and interest respectively. Shepherd et al. [8,9] found that ‘gloom’ was a commonly held experience (impression) that was related to the adaptation luminance and the distribution of light in an interior space. Durak et al. also investigated the impacts of different lighting arrangements on impressions of a room and reported that the use of cove lighting and/or wall washing lighting was associated with a pleasant impression of a room [10]. Vogels found that correlated colour temperature and luminance were related to atmosphere perceptions in liveliness and cosiness in retail environments [11].

In recent years, light sources have been developed that can be controlled in terms of brightness and colour to produce dynamic lighting of great complexity in indoor lit environments. Several studies [[12], [13], [14], [15]] included such dynamic light settings and the use of saturated colours in their experiments to investigate subjective impressions to different light conditions. It was reported that the combination of warm white lighting with warm coloured accent lighting (orange) could create a cosy ambience, while a high colour temperature with cyan coloured accent lighting would result in a lively atmosphere for older people [16]. The use of more saturated LED lights would lead to less tense, cosier and more lively perceptions [13]. Kompier et al. reported a transition to cool, bright light was alerting and activating, yet uncomfortable while the reverse transition to warm, dim light yielded a calm feeling [17]. Denk et al. reported an impact of cool-white light on positive affect of human emotion while no significant impact on atmosphere perception was found [18]. Although many of the previous studies demonstrated emotional and psychological impacts of lighting on human being, it is yet unclear whether such emotional impacts of lighting are something that we could set as a goal through the design process. Our aim, therefore, in this present study is to test a possibility of an emotion-based lighting design process and to explore workspace lit environments that evokes positive emotions. More specifically, this study used a model of emotion – the circumplex model of affect – to characterise emotion into four states. Such a model is characterised by two dimensions [19,20]. One dimension is activation-whether a person's emotional state is activated or deactivated: the other is pleasantness-whether such emotion is pleasant or unpleasant (see Fig. 1).

These dimensions divide the psychological domain space into four quadrants. These are: (1) PLEASANT – ACTIVATION (x + y), with these components: energetic, elating, exciting, enthusiastic, delightful, (2) PLEASANT – DEACTIVATION (x-y), with the following components: pleasing, satisfying, calm, placid, quiet, (3) UNPLEASANT – DEACTIVATION (-x-y): miserable, unhappy, sad, gloomy, depressive, sluggish, boring, (4) UNPLEASANT – ACTIVATION (-x + y): tense, jittery, stressful. Besides characterizing the four emotional states, the circumplex model of affect, in this study, also played a role in providing a sound set of emotion adjectives that was used for an assessment of human emotional impacts in lighting.

While there are several other prominent psychological models to characterise our emotions such as the Positive Activation – Negative Activation (PANA) model [21] and the vector model [22], we chose the circumplex model as it has been developed for use when people describe the affective state-the emotion that they feel under certain conditions [23] and describe their affective quality of a space-the atmosphere that tends to have a similar impression to that of room appearance [24]. The aim of the study was to explore four different human emotions, defined by a psychological model, that can be cued by a lighting setting. Fifteen lighting settings were configured informed by concepts from professional lighting designers and the emotional effects of these settings were investigated in a real-world experiment. The details of the settings and the experimental procedure is explained in the following section.

Section snippets

Lighting designer and kit-of-parts

In order to explore workplace lit environments that creates positive emotions, this study recruited professional lighting designers who were asked to devise two sets of detailed design proposals which could turn an empty room into one lively (pleasant – activation in Fig. 1) and one relaxing (pleasant – deactivation in Fig. 1) workspace using prepared lighting equipment from this study (kit-of-parts). Ten London-based professional lighting designers were initially contacted in April 2015 and

Frequency of use of the descriptors

The frequency of use of each of the descriptors of the CATA question to describe atmosphere of the spaces under the fifteen lighting scenarios is shown in Table 3. According to Cochran's Q test, statistically significant differences (p $\leq$ 0.05) in the frequency with which 22 of the 24 descriptors from the atmosphere question were used to describe the affective quality of the spaces, suggesting the differences in perceived atmosphere caused by different light scenarios. Only the descriptors of

Towards emotion-based workspace lighting design

In this study, the lighting designers devised their own lighting concepts with a goal to create positive emotions (pleasant – activation (liveliness) and pleasant – deactivation (relaxation)) with the kit-of-parts and the results showed that five concepts (two lively and three relaxing) succeed in yielding both positive atmosphere and intended emotions. Based on this finding, it could be suggested that there is the potential of emotion-based lighting design even with the limited resources in

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the lighting designers and the participants who undertook the field study. No specific funding has been used to support this study.

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View full text

Creating positive atmosphere and emotion in an office-like environment: A methodology for the lit environment

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Lighting designer and kit-of-parts

Frequency of use of the descriptors

Towards emotion-based workspace lighting design

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgement

Build. Environ.

Food Qual. Prefer.

Food Qual. Prefer.

Food Res. Int.

Food Qual. Prefer.

Food Qual. Prefer.

Neurosci. Lett.

Lighting appraisal, well-being and performance in open-plan offices: a linked mechanism approach

Light. Res. Technol.

Linking lighting appraisals to work behaviors

Environ. Behav.

Psychological process processes influencing lighting quality

J. Illum. Eng. Soc.

Interim study of procedures for investigating the effect of light on impression and behaviour

J. Ilum. Eng. Soc.

A guide to methodology procedures for measuring subjective impressions in lighting

J. Ilum. Eng. Soc.

Appearance of lit environment and its relevance in lighting design: experimental study, Light

Respir. Technol.

A step in quantifying the appearance of a lit scene

Light. Res. Technol.

Gloom as a psychophysical phenomenon

Light. Res. Technol.

Measuring appearance: parameters indicated from gloom studies

Light. Res. Technol.

Atmosphere Metrics: development of a tool to quantify experienced atmosphere

Impacts of LED dynamic white lighting on atmosphere perception

Light. Res. Technol.

A study of atmosphere perception of dynamic coloured light

Light. Res. Technol.

Atmosphere perception of dynamic LED lighting over different hue ranges

Light. Res. Technol.