New research from California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) in collaboration with the Center for Mind and Brain has revealed that ambient lighting can play a critical role in how we recover from stress. Backed by Toyota Boshoku America, Seoul Semiconductor, and Color Kinetics, the study involved more than 100 participants undergoing a stressful social scenario—delivering a speech and performing math in front of masked judges in white coats. The team, led by CLTC researcher Jae Yong Suk and Dr. Sreenivasan Meyyappan, aimed to investigate how lighting influences stress recovery using both brainwave monitoring and saliva samples to measure biomarkers like cortisol and alpha-amylase.
After the stress-inducing task, participants were brought into The Color Lab, a specially designed space at CLTC, where they sat under different colored ambient lights—white, amber, red, green, and blue—for 30 minutes. Suk explained, “We actually found that the amber lighting is beneficial for stress mitigation compared to white light, which is our basic reference point. All the other colors, like blue, red and green show slower stress recovery compared to white.” EEG data confirmed this, showing favorable changes in frontal alpha asymmetry under amber light, a key indicator of reduced stress.
Beyond stress recovery, The Color Lab is also used to study how lighting affects color perception—valuable insight for art institutions like the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, where lighting can impact how viewers perceive artwork. “We’re trying to understand how people perceive sunlight versus traditional LED lights,” said Suk. This partnership between scientific research and lighting technology not only enhances our understanding of human behavior under different lighting but also holds practical applications for healthcare, design, and public environments seeking to promote well-being.