Color & Light to the Rescue
Understanding the link between light and health, designers and engineers around the world are taking a good look at how paint colors and lighting systems can be made to nourish our bodies in the way that Nature does.
Light and color that changes with the cycles our bodies expect during the day and year, is something we need to address if we are to design a healthy environment. Here are a few tips to help you make it better.
Paint, lighting and glass companies now are looking into how to manipulate light and color, in order to make our indoor “stationery” light environments feel more natural.
Life is Simple, Nature is Complex
Manufacturers in Europe are developing lighting that changes during the day to return balance to our physical systems that have evolved over millions of years in Nature. (See Daylight & Airplanes: Healing Spaces with Light and Color)
Color too is evolving. Paint companies are developing paint products that use ‘complex’ colors.
A “full spectrum” or “complex” color uses as many as 14 to 16 pigments blended in the paint base, using no black. Color formulations use the rich mineral pigments that give a variations of yellow, add a bit ofred and some blue and voila! you’ve got the potential for thousands of colors that come alive and bring all the color frequencies into the room you are designing. [For instance, in a north facing room (predominance of blue light) or with little or no natural light, such as the basement or interior powder rooms, it’s important to use paint colors has a yellow undertone, even if it is red that brings borders on rich spice colors like raw saffron or tarragon. ]
Colors made this way, by blending the purity of the hues, offer a rich shifting and a perceived depth to the color. The color seems to have a subtle beautiful presence that seems to adapt and change to depending on the light and other colors in the room.
In our Exciting Colors! Color Specialist Certification Program, we get the chance to play with colors and see just how these colors are made, beige with a green undertone, or red with a subtle blue base and more.
Creating a color that will have layers of component color isn’t easy, but the result is spectacular. One of my color heroes and a pioneer in the field of the richness of “complex” colors is Donald Kaufmann, whose radiant colors and color application theory bring luminescence to painted rooms. He and his wife, Taffy Dahl, have developed a beautiful color palette and written books about how color changes based on the time of day, the atmosphere and how to use color to speak to our natural selves.
Others, from West Coast based Devine, to Benjamin Moore to PPG Pittsburgh Paints, are seeing the “light” and benefits of developing paint colors that are complex and ‘full-spectrum.’
When the colors and lights shift, our eyes and our bodies to feel the freedom and flexibility of being in the natural environment
Charlie can be reached at charlie@designers-touch.com . Custom Draperies of Louisville Ky. can motorize all window treatments. Draperies Louisville Ky. Draperies New Albany In,.Draperies Floyds Knobs In , Sellersburg In, Phone KY. 502- 905 2368 
