Welcome to the LIT mood lighting experience. Here you can learn about how color and light affect your mood. We invite you to kick back and enjoy the experience and the influence that color and light have on each one of us!

COLORS and how they have an affect on creating our moods:

BLUE- Blue is a relaxing color that has a calming effect on the body; it lowers blood pressure, heart rate and respiration. In hot and humid weather it provides a cooling effect. It also creates a feeling of cleanliness, healing and wisdom. Pleasant dreams might be the end result of shades of blue. It is also real people pleaser, the best-liked color, and associated with the ocean, sky, and time off from work. Blue has the opposite effect from red, calming you down while temporarily slowing your pulse.

RED – is a warm color often associated with power, strength, excitement, warmth and passion. Red is energizing and excites the emotions. It also stimulates the appetite. Thus many restaurants use red. Red warms the body, increases the heart rate, brain-wave activity and respiration. Mothers are encouraged to stimulate infants’ brains by dangling mobiles containing bright red balls on them. If high blood pressure, hypertension or poor coordination plagues a person, he or she should not decorate rooms with the color red.

GREEN - is associated freshness, coolness, clarity and growth. It creates harmony of mind, body and soul it reminds us of spring and therefore new beginnings. It brings feelings of calm, anticipation and hope, and it has a soothing, relaxing effect on the body as well as the mind. Not relaxed enough? Pale green is the most restful hue of all, imbued with healing powers and a tranquilizing effect. Are you on a diet? Green can help. It helps control the anxiety that often leads to overeating.

ORANGE - is associated with warmth, enthusiasm, stimulation, energy and exuberance. It’s a lively color, associated with Halloween and Thanksgiving. Orange isn’t as intense as red because it’s blended with the cheeriness of yellow. Orange is the color of fun and sociability. Warming and energizing. Orange is also good for stimulating the appetite and reduces fatigue. Of course, if you’re on a diet, avoid orange.

VIOLET – is not found much in nature but has a sense of spirituality, purifying, mysticism, and creativity. If you are having trouble sleeping, purple/violet can help. Violet heightens our awareness and helps us to give our very best. Violet also provides a calming effect for body and mind. 

YELLOW – Yellow is a reminder of happiness as well as a memory stimulator. Yellow also raises blood pressure and pulse rate but not to the degree that red does. To much yellow can create fatigue. It inspires a sunny disposition, with feelings of warmth and optimism. The color also promotes quick, clear thinking, making it ideal for an office. Perhaps parking garages should be painted yellow for those of us who can’t remember where we parked.

PINK – Pink has a soothing effect and creates a mood of sensitivity and love. Pink’s tranquilizing effect has gained it entrance in prisons, hospital rooms and drug centers it helps to dissolve anger and encourages unconditional love.

More on color and light ….

Did you know that white light is actually a combination of all colors? Color simply comes from light.

The retinas in our eyes though have three types of color receptors in the form of cones. We can actually only detect three of these visible colors – red – blue and green. These colors are called additive primaries. It is these three colors that are mixed in our brain to create all of the other colors we see…

 

When light from the sun passes through a prism, the light is split into the seven visible colors by refraction. Thus white is not an actual color but a combination of colors as seen below. 

 

So how does light and color affect our moods? The human brain has pineal glands which control the daily rhythm of life. When light enters through our bodies it travels along neurological pathways to these pineal glands. Each color yields different wavelength frequencies and different frequencies have different effects on us. Below is a table of colors and their associated wavelengths.

The visible spectrum is:

 

Here is how the visible spectrum compares with all other electro magnetic frequencies in our daily lives:

Below are a few examples of how light and color affects our daily lives:
It’s no mistake that McDonalds chose the golden arches as a combination of yellow, orange and red. These colors have some of the longest wavelengths and are know to stimulate appetite. Burger King changed uniform colors to blue and green their sales went down.
Virgin American Airlines uses violet and pink lights in the passenger cabin to calm travelers and ease the stress of travel.
An Illinois hospital uses blue, green and purple colors of light to create a calming effect in the waiting room.