Exploring the effects of contextual factors on home lighting experience

Abstract

Background Although lighting increasingly penetrates our everyday life due to technology advancement, little is known about how people interact with lighting and how contextual factors impact on the experience. Thus, this study attempted to reveal how two contextual factors (the level of concentration required for pleasant lighting use and social interaction) could influence the manipulation of lighting parameters, particularly focusing on the major factors of lighting such as illuminance, color temperature, and hue. Methods To understand of the interaction between contextual factors and lighting variables, an experiment was conducted. 10 singles and 10 couples had to manipulate lighting variables such as intensity and colorin five everyday situations for pleasant lighting experience. Results The result of the experiment showed that illuminance, color temperature and hue are influenced by the degree of concentration, but only partially influenced by social factors. The findings could provide a better understanding of manipulating lighting variables in terms of use context with design practitioners. Conclusions The overall findings of the study indicate that illuminance, color temperature, and hue are significantly dependent upon the level of concentration required in at-home lighting use, and also have only a partial dependence on social effect. This implies that although we assumed that people have their personal lighting preferences, their preferences can be largely dependent on the degree of concentration required for at-home pleasant lighting use. Hence, there are common patterns among people in manipulating lighting parameters, which are less dependent on personal differences. © Archives of Design Research