Indoor lighting effects on subjective impressions and mood states: A critical review

Indoor lighting quality influences both physical and psychological aspects. Although reviews concerning lighting psychical influences continue being updated, few reviews concerning lighting psychological influences are in the literature. This paper presents a comprehensive and thorough analysis of 64 articles (1973–July 2022) regarding both artificial lighting and daylighting influences on subjective responses to lighting impressions and mood states. First, this review categorizes the methods adopted by these selected studies for collecting subjective data and identifies the lighting design parameters and measures used in these studies. Second, this review analyzes the findings on the following four aspects: 1) artificial lighting effects; 2) daylighting effects; 3) non-design variables, and 4) insignificant effects. Among the reviewed studies, there is a lack of consensus on lighting effects upon subjective lighting impressions and mood states in two aspects: significant or insignificant lighting effects as well as positive or negative influences. In addition to individual differences and experiment design, image-based simulations and sample size are two factors that require extra considerations in lighting research.