Color can affect your mood. Companies spend thousands of dollars every year researching the decorating colors will encourage customers to drop the most dough when they walk through the door. You can also use this mental trick to set the mood in a room with just the color of your lights.
Cold or hot? Each has its place
Smart lighting is available in different colors, which allows you to change the color of a room according to your needs. For example, “cooler” lighting makes a person feel more productive and focused and is better suited to an office. This is why so many offices use intense fluorescent lighting.
On the other hand, “warmer” lighting – such as candles or overhead lights in restaurants – promotes a feeling of relaxation.
You can change the color of the lighting in your home to change your mood, but first you need to understand how color psychology works. After that, just change the lights according to your needs.
Color psychology
Color psychology is a large and complex field, and the science is inconclusive. Still, if you want to give it a try, here are a few basics to keep in mind:
- Red is associated with power: It can help stimulate your appetite, making it an ideal color for a kitchen or dining room. In terms of lighting, this provides a sense of urgency. In less intense shades, it can help with relaxation.
- Blue is soothing: Although it has a bad reputation for interrupting the circadian rhythm, soft blue light can be useful in offices and workplaces as a productivity booster.
- Purple helps stimulate creativity: If you’re an artist, writer, designer, or photographer, or just working on a tough problem, soft purple lighting can help.
- Green causes the least eye strain: It would be ideal in a bedroom or living room to make yourself comfortable while you relax and catch up with your favorite TV series.
- Orange and yellow are associated with sunrise: Both are ideal for soft lighting in the morning, as you prepare to encourage a sense of happiness and contentment.
Of course, there are also light color temperatures. For example, a cool white has a bluish tint that encourages focus and alertness, but it can disrupt your sleep cycle. A warm white is the perfect option for lounging and chilling out before bed, but not the best choice for an office environment.
How to set the mood of a room with smart lighting
The Philips Hue and similar smart lights make it possible to change the color of the light in a room on the fly. Defining specific scenes allows you to recall the same settings with just the push of a button.
We’ll show you how to do this with Philips Hue lighting, but you can use any smart lighting system that offers configurable colors.
To do this, you will need the Philips Hue app on your mobile device, a Hue Bridge, and at least one Hue light with color. Open the Philips Hue app. In our example, three rooms are already installed, but yours will be different depending on the layout of your home. Select one of the rooms.
After choosing a part, a color wheel appears.
You can move the pointer around the wheel to choose the color and shade you want. Alternatively, if you tap on the painter’s palette icon in the upper right corner, you can choose from a series of preset scenes. If you have more than one bulb in the room, each will reflect a different color in the frame of the scene.
You can also create your own scene. To do so, just tap “New Scene” in the top left corner. In the next screen, enter a name for your scene and choose the colors you want to incorporate into it.
This tool is particularly powerful; you can even choose an image and have your scene incorporate its ambient colors. There are several preset images, but you can also choose one from your Camera Roll.
In addition to the basic functions offered by Philips Hue lamps, some experimental functions are also available through Hue Laboratories. This platform allows Philips Hue owners to opt for early prototype features, such as allowing a light to flicker like a candle.
If you want to see the options available, just tap “Explore” at the bottom of the screen and then tap “Hue Labs.”
Philips Hue provides a powerful personalization platform where people can set the mood in their homes with smart lighting, but it’s not the only one. People with LIFX lighting can access many similar functions, as well as those with Sengled, Tradfri or GE lighting.
