Many people don’t know this, but lighting can have a huge impact on your mood. This is why some people feel blue during the cold weather because the lack of sunlight affects their mood. This is called SAD or seasonal affective disorder. It isn’t just our mental health that lighting affects, but our physical health as well. Lighting can either improve or disturb our sleep and can impact our overall well-being. Light is all around us, whether it is natural light, the lights in our homes, or lights from our devices like cell phones and laptops. Therefore, it is impossible for it not to impact our lives one way or another. Keep reading to find out how lighting can influence the way you feel.
Intensifies Your Emotions
Bright light can intensify your negative as well as positive emotions. Additionally, it can make you see other people more attractive, crave spicy food, and react in a strong way towards positive or negative words. Bright light will intensify other emotions as well, like happiness, sadness, and anxiety. The presence or lack of light in our daily routine affects our mood significantly, which is why people tend to feel low and dull during dark and gloomy days while they feel cheerful on bright sunny days. Bright light can also make you feel warm, even if you don’t change the temperature of the room.
Sunlight Makes You Happy
Sunlight has a huge impact on our lives and mood. This is why, as mentioned before, people feel gloomy during wintertime as a result of lack of sunlight. Even if you don’t suffer from the seasonal affective disorder, lack of sunlight exposure can negatively affect your mood and cause sleep deprivation. It is recommended to let natural light in your home, so you can feel more relaxed, happier, and it can also help with depression.
Makes You Energetic
Lighting can affect your energy, especially LED light. LED light makes you feel more alert and increases your energy levels. This is because LED light has the same color components as the sun. However, unlike sunlight, LED light doesn’t have any ultraviolet or infrared which is why it is a great choice for your home, according to lighting specialists, as it can help treat the seasonal affective disorder. Since LED light keeps you alert, it is used in schools and offices in order to improve workers’ and students’ performances, attention span, and productivity. Additionally, this type of light can reduce anxiety and stress as well.
Promotes a Cozy Feeling
After a long day at work, you want to go home and relax. This is going to be hard if your home isn’t a cozy and comfortable place. You should create a relaxing space in your home by getting creative with your lighting choices. You can use candles, twinkle lights, night lights, or floor lamps. This will make your space feel warm and cozy where you can relax and unwind after a long day at work.
Improves Your Sleep
If you have trouble sleeping, then maybe your lighting is the problem. The brain perceives that it is time to sleep when you are in a dark room. So, before going to bed you spend your time in a bright-lighted room, then it will disturb your sleep cycle and will negatively impact the quality of your sleep. Not getting enough sleep will make you feel exhausted the next day, which will, in return, affect your mood. In order to remedy this situation, you should avoid bright light in the evening and dim the lights. In addition to that, you should avoid using your cellphone and laptop for at least an hour before going to sleep.
Affects Your Appetite
Lighting can affect your appetite. It affects your food choices, the amount of food that you eat, the speed that you eat with, and how you perceive the flavor. For instance, soft and dim lighting will make you eat fewer amounts of food, and eat it slowly. Additionally, dim lights can make you crave unhealthy food. The reason behind this is that soft light makes you feel relaxed and less alert, so you won’t pay attention to your food choices. On the other hand, bright light makes you eat faster.
Different kinds of lighting can affect our mood in different ways, positively as well as negatively. You need to take advantage of the positive effects of lights and avoid the negative ones. For instance, spend more time in the sunlight, early in the morning, to elevate your mood. Use bright lights at work and while studying to improve productivity, whereas, opt for dim lights in the evenings to improve your sleep cycle. You can also use candles and twinkle lights to create a relaxing and cozy feeling.
Published on Holr Magazine