Double LED low energy bathroom vanity lighting. Remember that people interpret the overall environment chiefl y through brightness relationships. Their subjective impressions of visual space are primarily a function of brightness patterns and pattern organization the relationship of surfaces that are lighted or left in relative darkness. Some lighting patterns affect personal orientation and understanding of a room’s surfaces and objects.
Object lighting and shelf lighting influence attention and consciousness, wall lighting and corner lighting enhance understanding of room size and shape. Together, the resulting balance of brightness establishes or modifies our sense of enclosure.
Two LED low energy bathroom vanity lighting, halophane glass
The architectural environment, however, is interpreted by illuminating vertical and overhead surfaces. When lighting focuses the visual emphasis on these peripheral surfaces, the intensity of illumination on the tabletops is reduced; objects and people in the center fall into silhouette. Activity is then visually subordinate to the general space, inducing a more intimate atmosphere in which individuals feel a sense of privacy or anonymity.
Successful restaurant design is the balance of the two: a convivial atmosphere in which one feels a sense of intimacy and privacy, where other guests at other tables become the background, and your table is the most important one in the room. In offices, controlling the luminance variations within limits ensures good visibility. Within these limits, variation is desirable and will make the offi ce environment more
pleasing.
Lighting design includes shadows as well as light. Just as musicians make sounds to capture silence and architects develop complex shapes to envelop empty space, lighting designers illuminate with shadows.
Again, three‐dimensional form is perceived as a relationship of light and shadow. If a projecting corner formed by the meeting of two white planes is lighted so that the two sides look equally bright, the eye can no longer discern the edge of the corner. You may still recognize it because of the binocular function of your eyes or because you can see where the two planes intersect other planes. But you have lost an essential means of seeing that there is a corner.
Although interior surfaces are not light control devices, their refl ectance properties are fundamental to the lighting design. The quantity and direction of light reflected from these surfaces affect both the efficiency of the initial light distribution and our perception of surface brightness.
Wall, ceiling, and fl oor surfaces are large‐area “reflectors” that redistribute light in the room. High reflectance finishes, such as white and off‐white, promote maximum use of the available light; increasingly darker fi nishes intercept and absorb increasingly greater proportions of the light.