Contrast=Interest

This past Saturday I spent my Fourth of July as I expect most of you did, visiting family, tossing the football around, watching baseball, eating hot dogs and eventually lighting a few fireworks. Fireworks are legal in Connecticut, where my sister lives, and so we loaded up on some relatively safe and colorful visual confections and when the sun went down, the matches came out. My family gathered on the porch and on the lawn and watched as my uncle and cousin fired off a series of packaged fireworks with names like “Earth Flare.” The array of colors and simple sparkles kept everyone’s attention as they lit their own sparklers in between the more colorful stuff. Everyone’s eyes were fixed as the light and color reached different heights. My family, ever fans of the dramatic let out their biggest cheer when my uncle lit four separate boxes at once and we temporarily lit up the sky in front of my sister’s house. While there are infinite reasons we find fireworks captivating-and have throughout our history-there is a core concept that we as lighting designers can take away…contrast in the visual field creates interest.

It sounds simple, but in truth our brain is most interested by what we cannot see. Think about your favorite black and white photo, or the last rock concert you went to. Our eyes and brains are hard wired to take in as much visual information as possible. When we are presented an abundance of information in one area of the visual field (the area where light is present) and very little in the rest…our brain strives to fill in the blanks. This phenomenon is essential to creating a well-composed scene.

Yet, as lighting designers we often forgo generating this kind of interest in the scenes we create, particularly in the retail and commercial environments, lighting is driven to tasks, establishing minimum footcandles and then bathing the entire space in a generic wash. In retail, the only added effect is often to simply add MORE light to product in an effort to create some contrast. This is not contrast, it’s just light pollution.

The human eye is capable of high quality vision in fairly low light, designers need to experiment more with overall light level reduction and we higher contrast lighting to generate interest in the visual space. Am I suggesting that every cube-farm get lit like the Pentagon war room in a Michael Bay movie? No. But perhaps rather than bathing every common space in the same fluorescent wash try accenting natural architectural elements like columns or countertops. Visual variety creates interest and coupled with other concepts, like effective use of daylighting can create scenes that change throughout the day as the light levels naturally change with the course of the sun.

As a corollary to this post, down below tell the konstructr nation one of the most interesting scenes you’ve encountered. Could be from a movie or something you saw on the street or in nature. Visual contrast was almost surely present. These are the experiences we should draw on as designers when creating the spaces we live and work in.