Effects of Lighting on Perception of Spaciousness

Abstract

With different lighting, one's perception of spaciousness could be different even in the same room. From experience, the more a room is lit, the more the spaciousness seems to be. The localisation of light also seems to have an effect. This research is to examine if these hypotheses are true, and to propose a model to quantify the effect of light to spaciousness, using luminance and their three-dimensional localization. We had an experiment in a living room with different lightings, asking subjects about their perception of spaciousness compared to the reference lighting scene. It is proved that both quantity and localisation of light influence spaciousness. Luminance level is measured using HDR image processing, and the coordinate value of each pixel is measured using Radiance RTRACE command with a virtually rebuilt room.