Window blinds that roll up or move completely to the side of a window can provide privacy when needed but don’t block sunlight when they’re rolled up.
Be mindful of glare if you forgo the curtains. Glare can counter all of the good effects that flow from bathing your rooms in sunlight. Sheer curtains can help keep the glare down at different times of day, and so can judicious use of shiny finishes; with fewer shiny surfaces, there is less glare. Some PlaceTypes find shiny things more desirable than others do, but even people who relish shine should plan a space to keep it glare free.
Just like colors, light can be either warm or cool. When we talk about research on colored light, we’re discussing investigations of subtle gradations in the light experienced, not those garish red, blue, green, and orange bulbs sold at Halloween and Christmas time. Those odd-colored bulbs distort social interactions; it is thought that is because they make everyone’s skin seem to be odd colors. They aren’t something you’d want to use in your home or office.
The packages that most light bulbs come in today are labeled warm or cool. If you have some older bulbs hanging around and they’re marked only in degrees Kelvin, warm bulbs have a temperature of about 2,700 K(elvin), while light seems cool at about 4,000 or more degrees Kelvin. Warm light is best for relaxing, thinking creatively, and getting along with others, while cooler light is ideal for alertness, concentrating, and analytical reasoning. Our memories also work better under relatively cooler light as compared to warmer light. Researchers have found, for example, that we tend to be in a better mood in warmer light (around 2,700 K) than we are in cooler light (around 6,000 K) at about the intensity of light generally found in offices.
•Warm light in your living room is a good idea—which won’t surprise you if you’ve ever lit a gathering with candles or a fire.
•What should you do about light color in your office, home, or elsewhere? The answer clearly depends. If you’re a poet or an accountant (the latter field being one in which creative accounting sometimes leads to jail time), choosing a light color doesn’t seem to be a problem, as the advantageous choice is clear; when your occupational success clearly depends on creative or analytical thinking, light bulb color selection is easy. It may be best for you, however, to have both warm and cool lights in your office and to turn one type or the other on at a time, with the color selected depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
•Another consideration: surface colors look best under light colors in the same temperature family—warm surface colors generally look best in warm light and cool surface colors in cooler light. Cross temperature design can make surface colors seem muddy or like they need a good scrub. Since the saturation and brightness of a surface color determine its emotional effect, it’s generally best to pick a surface hue after deciding on the light color that makes it more likely you’ll think the sorts of thoughts you’ve planned for a space. After you’ve selected a light color, you can select a warm or cool surface color to coordinate with that light temperature.
•Warmer lights are generally preferred during the evening (which makes sense because in our evolutionary past, fires would have been a comforting presence at night), while cooler lights win out during the day. Having a mix of bulbs in a room means you can light a space in different ways at different times.
•When you’re using warm lights, for full effect, they should be placed lower than the top of your head and be focused on tabletops and other horizontal surfaces. Energizing light, that is, cooler light, should be placed higher than the top of your head and should flood the walls and splash your ceiling with light.
•Night-lights should be red or amber shades because those are less disruptive to our circadian rhythms.
Light can be darker and lighter, too. Professionals have all sorts of fancy tools to tell how bright or dark a light is, and everyone else just has eyes. What you need to know is that as light gets brighter, our energy levels climb. Intensely bright light works well for operating heavy machinery and doing surgery. The light of a single candle is great for a quiet conversation. Light-colored walls and glossy surfaces make lights seem a little brighter, and that means they are more energizing, something to remember when you’re picking materials for surfaces. Lights on dimmers or with a few preset settings allow you to select the light intensities that work for you in a particular moment.
Humans are most comfortable in spaces with certain distributions of light. Allover bright or dark is not what makes us feel good. Lighter colors on walls makes spaces seem bigger, and positioning pot lights in ceilings and other similar “luminaires” so that they bathe walls in light also makes a space seem larger—which can be a good thing or not, depending on the true size of the space and what’s planned.
“Dappled” light is a big hit with humans; we feel good when we bask in it. Dappled light is slightly darker in some places and slightly lighter in others, just like the light that comes through the branches of a leafy tree on a sunny day. Tabletop lamps are better options in socializing areas than overhead lights that bathe an entire room in a blanket of light that is the same color and intensity everywhere. Pools of light also create zones in a space. Those zones may be dedicated to a particular task, such as dining, playing cards, or meeting to discuss a new advertising campaign or other brainstorming , and that’s a good thing. They indicate a territory, and when we’re in a territory we control, we’re happier, more relaxed, and more productive. People in the same light zone tend to socialize with each other.
Science has shown that it’s useful to subtly vary the color and intensity of the light in your home and workplace to mirror the color and intensity cycles of light outdoors. This helps keep your circadian rhythms in sync with the world around you and your mood good. That means warmer light is best during morning and evening hours and cooler light works well midday. Light outdoors is brightest at noon, and light inside should also be most intense then.
Visual Complexity (Be Brave, Read This Section)
The visual complexity of an environment has a significant effect on how we feel when we’re there. Visual complexity is determined by the number of colors, shapes, and other visual elements present and their symmetry and organization.
The bottom line of all of the research that’s been done is that it’s generally best for humans to be in spaces with moderate visual complexity. We’re most relaxed and comfortable in a space with moderate visual complexity—too much or too little visual complexity is unpleasant and makes us feel tense. Our brains also work better in spaces with moderate visual complexity, even when we’re as young as three years old. We also prefer art and visual patterns (say, on wallpaper) with moderate visual complexity.
Spaces that are more than moderately complex energize us. Higher energy levels are better in an exercise area, for example.
“Moderate visual complexity” is a phrase that has no real meaning to the humans on the planet who aren’t environmental psychologists, so examples are in order. A residential interior created by Frank Lloyd Wright has moderate visual complexity. The interior of the Meyer May home, designed by Wright, is moderately complex visually, and so is Taliesin in Wisconsin, another Wright-designed home and one he lived in himself. Images of both of these homes are available online.
If you are trying to create moderate visual complexity, the best way to determine the complexity of a space is to visualize one of Wright’s residential interiors, or another a space known to have moderate visual complexity, and then mentally compare the complexity of the two. This may sound like a dubious way to proceed, but it works.
The number of patterns on surfaces makes the single largest contribution to how visually complex a place is. To manage complexity, all of the patterns in any room or other defined space should always use the same select set of colors. Patterns used together should all feature the same few shades of brown and
