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It begins with a gesture so small it barely registers: a fingertip grazing a screen, shifting a smart bulb from sterile white to sunset peach. The room warms, not just in hue but in mood, as if the light itself were a balm for the day’s emotional residue. In this moment, light becomes more than illumination. It becomes a form of self-regulation, a curated atmosphere, a silent companion. We have grown accustomed to this control, to the idea that light should respond to our moods, mirror our intentions, and soothe our anxieties. But beneath this aesthetic choreography lies a deeper cultural fixation. Our obsession with illumination is not merely about visibility. It reflects a longing for clarity, safety, and emotional coherence in a world that often resists all three.
This relationship with light is not new. It stretches back through centuries of ritual and symbolism, where illumination was synonymous with divinity, purity, and power. Ancient fire rituals marked transitions between worlds, both spiritual and seasonal. Candles flickered in cathedrals not just to light the nave, but to signify the presence of the sacred. Stained glass refracted sunlight into kaleidoscopic sermons, embedding theology into architecture. Later, gaslight transformed urban life, casting both glamour and paranoia across cobblestone streets. Neon arrived like a fever dream, painting cities with desire and disorientation. Each technological shift in lighting brought with it a new emotional vocabulary, a new way of seeing and being seen.
“Lighting has always played a crucial role in human life, evolving from basic necessity to an art form driven by technological advancements and cultural influences” (Electric Light: An Architectural History, 2018)
Sandy Isenstadt, “Electric Light: An Architectural History.” MIT Press, 2018.
Today, lighting design has become emotional architecture. Offices mimic circadian rhythms to boost productivity. Hospitals dim their LEDs to reduce patient anxiety. Social media platforms elevate golden hour to mythic status, turning natural light into a commodity of self-presentation. Smart lighting systems promise mood modulation at the tap of an app, offering sunrise simulations for gentle waking and lavender hues for winding down. We have outsourced emotional calibration to algorithms, trusting them to know what our nervous systems need. Yet this trust is not without consequence. The illusion of control offered by these systems may soothe us, but it also narrows our emotional range, flattening complexity into programmable presets.
“Lighting has a profound effect on mood and well-being. Think about how different lighting makes you feel—whether it’s bright and energising or dim and cosy. It’s one of the most impactful elements of your environment”.
Lynne Stambouly, “The Emotional Impact of Lighting.” Technology Designer, March 2025.
Light comforts, but it also exposes. Streetlights promise safety, yet they erase privacy. Smart homes glow with ambient intelligence, but their illumination is often bidirectional. The brighter the room, the clearer the surveillance. In cities, over-illumination becomes a kind of visual noise, sterilizing nuance and erasing mystery. We have conflated visibility with virtue, forgetting that some truths live best in shadow. The ethics of light are rarely discussed, yet they shape our experience of space, agency, and autonomy. Who gets to be seen, and who controls the switch?
“Rather than continuing to view lighting as a punitive means of enforcing surveillance and public safety, we must advance radically inclusive, responsive design methods that use light to redress inequality in the built environment”.
Lucy Corlett, “Beyond Safety and Surveillance: New Possibilities for Public Light After Dark.” MIT Urban Studies Thesis, May 2025.
Philosophically, light has long been equated with knowledge, progress, and purity. Darkness, by contrast, is cast as ignorance, danger, and the unknown. But this binary is flawed. Our obsession with illumination may be less about enlightenment and more about a fear of ambiguity. In designing for perpetual brightness, we risk emotional shallowness. We deny ourselves the richness of chiaroscuro, the psychological depth of dusk, the narrative tension of the half-lit. In chasing the glow, we may be fleeing the very stories that make us human.
We have engineered light to soothe, to sell, and to surveil. But in our pursuit of illumination, we risk bleaching out the mystery that once made darkness sacred. To design with shadows is to trust the unseen. It is an invitation to discomfort, to curiosity, to the kind of emotional depth that no algorithm can simulate. In the end, our obsession with light might not be about brightness at all. It might be about the stories we are afraid to tell in the dark.
Isenstadt, Sandy. Electric Light: An Architectural History. MIT Press, 2018.
Explores the cultural and architectural evolution of artificial lighting, framing it as both a technological and symbolic force.
Available from MIT Press
Stambouly, Lynne. “The Emotional Impact of Lighting.” Technology Designer, March 2025.
A deep dive into how lighting affects mood, behavior, and emotional well-being, featuring insights from decades of design experience.
Read the full interview
Corlett, Lucy. Beyond Safety and Surveillance: New Possibilities for Public Light After Dark. MIT Urban Studies Thesis, May 2025.
A forward-looking thesis on ethical lighting design, advocating for inclusive, place-based approaches to urban illumination.
Download the thesis from MIT
Dan | BloqDigital is a lighting designer and digital artist based in the UK, who writes about Art, Technology, Web3 and Culture.
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