'Soft white' fluorescent bulbs: These mimic the warmth of incandescent bulbs, but all colors can appear faded in their light.įull-spectrum fluorescents: Although expensive, these bulbs produce light that most closely resembles natural sunlight. Halogen bulbs: These newer incandescent bulbs produce brighter, white light that is more like sunlight.įluorescent bulbs: These generate cool, blue light that amplifies blues and greens, but mutes warmer colors. Incandescent bulbs: These generate yellow light that intensifies warm colors but tends to dull cooler colors. The type of artificial lighting used plays a large role in how a color looks. In residential and commercial spaces, artificial lighting is frequently used to either supplement daylight or replace it entirely. The effects of different types of artificial lighting Then, as the afternoon wears on towards sunset, daylight again warms and gives rooms a reddish cast. At midday, especially in areas that receive direct sunlight, color can appear washed out. The color with the hottest temperature (measured in Kelvin units) is actually blue and the coolest is red. In fact, it's an interesting paradox that the physically hottest sunlight imparts the least 'warmth' to color. As the day progresses to midday, sunlight develops a cool, bluish cast.

In the morning, sunlight is warmer because it's lower on the horizon. And a west-facing room can look dull and shadowy in the morning, but be bathed in a warm glow in the evening.

For instance, a bedroom that faces east and is washed with strong sunlight in the early morning will look very different when next seen late at night in artificial lighting. As the day progresses from sunrise to noon, late afternoon and dusk, the light changes in intensity, creating changes in the appearance of color. But even natural sunlight is not consistent. 'Sunlight is the purest light and provides the purest color from the spectrum standpoint of the perception of color,' explains Debbie Zimmer, paint and color expert with the Rohm and Haas Paint Quality Institute. That's why when specifying colors for a space, it's important to take light – both its presence and its absence – into consideration. 'Color is light made visible, and the atmosphere of the air we breathe and the quality of the light passing through it affect how we see color,' says David Kaufman in his book Color and Light: Luminous Atmospheres for Painted Rooms. Any kind of light – daylight, artificial light, even candlelight – can dramatically change the way a certain color appears. However, that same red-orange paint in a room with a west-facing window will become intensely vivid – perhaps overwhelmingly so – in the late afternoon. For example, a warm orange-red paint in a room with a north-facing window will make the room appear brighter and warmer and help offset the bluish cast to the light.

Take the same can of paint and apply it to two rooms, one that receives limited natural light and another that's flooded with sunshine, and it will look and act like two different colors. It's a simple fact that light can change the appearance of any given color.

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