May 5, 2022
By using the principles of Color Selectable Lighting, businesses are able to help their employees stay focused and alert, lower their fatigue, and even increase their productivity.
Humans are hardwired to respond to different colors of daylight. Morning light is bright and bluish and is considered a cool color; it helps us to feel more alert and focused. Afternoon light is yellowish and warm; it causes us to feel more calm and relaxed.
Color Selectable Lighting allows you to choose from a range of white light with different cool to warm color temperatures. By mimicking certain times of day, the artificial light can be used to positively affect everyone in your building.
(Color Selectable Lighting may also be referred to as color-tunable, white-tunable, and tunable white lighting.)
Cool and Warm white light applications.
- Hospitals use cool white in operating rooms to help surgeons avoid fatigue, especially during long procedures.
- Hospitals also use lighting to shorten the length of patient stays.1
- Manufacturers Color Select cool white light to improve their employees’ productivity.2
- Color Selecting cool white also helps manufacturers improve safety at workstations while decreasing quality control issues.
- Business executives use cool white light in their offices to combat jetlag and Color Select warm light at day’s end to help their inner body clock continue adjusting to the time zone.
Hotels use warm white light in their rooms to help guests feel cozy and relaxed.
- Restaurants are using dimmed warm white to create an intimate atmosphere much like candlelight in their dining rooms while using cool light behind the scenes to help busy restaurant staffers keep pace.
- Schools may use cool light in classrooms to help students stay alert and improve their academic progress by as much as 25%.3
- Likewise, schools may Color Select warm light in their student cafeterias to reduce the kind of stress that may lead students to disruptive behavior.4
- Dimmed warm lighting is often Color Selected for hotel lobbies, ballrooms, and theaters both for its relaxing effects and the special-occasion ambiance that lowered lighting creates.
- Clothing retailers change the color temperature of their sales floor lighting by season. They Color Select cool white in winter when selling coats and skiwear, and warm white in summer when displaying shorts and swimwear.
At the touch of a button or a tap on your smart device, Color Selectable Lighting lets you change lighting colors, program lighting by both time and color, even add some cost-cutting features.
Color Selectable controls let you change from warm to cool colors in real time or you can program the colors to change at certain times of day.
Dimmer controls let you adjust a room’s ambiance. You can also use the dimmer feature to lower the lights in unoccupied spaces to save energy and costs, while still leaving enough light to deter bad actors – parking lots use this feature.
Occupancy sensors can save you even more energy and money. They turn the lights off when no one is in the room and turn them back on when they sense a person entering.
To learn more about Color Selectable Lighting and what it could do for your organization, please talk to your local dealer.
1 https://www.healthdesign.org/chd/research/impact-light-outcomes-healthcare-settings
2 https://onlinemba.unc.edu/news/how-lighting-affects-productivity/
3 https://www.canyonsdistrict.org/general-news/4131-health-schools-how-does-classroom-lighting-affect-learning/
4 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262679333_The_Effect_of_Variable_Light_on_the_Fidgetiness_and_Social_Behavior_of_Pupils_in_School