Taking a trip down memory lane will help you understand how light impacts mental performance.
Remember when your grade school teacher would dim the lights during independent work time.
Also, recall when class lights would be turned on to full brightness during school test days, creating a harsh glow.
Now think about the times when a tutor would teach you under the light of a warm table lamp.
These lighting choices were intentional and not accidental. Such nostalgia-inducing lighting scenes were meant to suit the various activities.
It means that light color temperature goes beyond aesthetics, having a psychological impact on your mental state.
In light of this, what is the best lighting for optimizing focus and focus and productivity? Creativity? Relaxation? Let’s delve into it.
Best Lighting for Focus and Productivity
Knowing the proper lighting temperature for creating an environment for focusing is critical. Why?
To ensure that you tap into your most productive, strongest self when it’s time to get work done.
Scientific studies recommend cool lighting in places where you want to do focused work.
The main reason for this is that cool light bulbs with blue tones nearly resemble natural sunlight thus raising your brain’s alertness, thus elevating mental performance.
For the most stimulating light, we recommend LEDs.
LED bulbs are available in either cool daylight or daylight color temperatures, made specifically to suit scenarios when you are most active.
Install these bulbs in your mentally and physically active spaces like workout areas, offices, or garages to get invigorating light.
For the ultimate light quality, go with LEDs – Read more about how to select them here. These provide the most clean, pure light to significantly elevate your focus.
You now have a fundamental understanding of the best lights to turbo boost your productivity.
While warm lights create cozy, soothing ambience, they are not ideal for setting up test taking and study environments (where cool lights shine best).
Best Lighting for Relaxation
Certain lighting options can soothe and calm your mind just like warm water soothes muscles after a fatiguing day.
Warm lighting is what you need to set the tone and ambience to promote mind relaxation and keep you in the appropriate mental performance zone.
For example, highly saturated warm light with a red tone has a notable emotional impact on your minds.
Therefore, you can get the LED, which is the ideal light bulb for the space you unwind in the evening.
You can get it in either warm white or soft white color temperatures (link), creating a relaxing mood thanks to their natural cozy tones.
Warm lights are suited for dining rooms, family rooms, or reading nooks. However, the actual light placement is all based on your daily routine.
If you have difficulty falling asleep, it’s critical to swap out the cool light bulbs for warm light bulbs such as sun filled LEDs. Why?
Warm lighting has very minimal blue light, which prepares your mind for bedtime unlike cool lighting which keeps your brain awake and alert (just like cold plunges).
So if you enjoy evenings of relaxation, bathing in warm lights is the way to go.
Best Lighting for Creativity
If you are a creative person working artistic hobbies like writing, painting, or crocheting, it’s critical to consider how your studio or office lighting drives your mental performance and impacts your creative aspects.
Dim lighting is the recommendation for optimal creativity. In a study, researchers compared students in dimly-lit versus brightly-lit environments.
On the one hand, students in the brighter spaces demonstrated higher creativity levels. The bright overhead lights were perceived to be a creativity constrainer.
On the other hand, students in dimly-lit spaces demonstrated a tendency to explore more novel ideals and take more creative risks.
Therefore, dim lighting enhances self-expression, opening your mind to many more probabilities.
If you are a creative person, you now know what triggers your mojo. Get a dimmable light and tune it to a low brightness setting to tap into your most creative self.
