When designing and lighting a space, is the goal to fulfill a specific requirement or to be creative? Both perspectives hold merit; however, a unifying principle should always prevail: people must remain at the center of everything we do. Today, it is well understood that our environment significantly influences our well-being, affecting mood and performance, even in challenging contexts such as outer space. While this standpoint has encompassed anthropometric and biological aspects, new approaches are expanding design beyond the tangible. Lighting is now used to shape atmospheres that resonate deeply with our emotions.
This vision elevates interior design to a discipline focused on cultivating well-being, where the designer's role extends beyond aesthetics to crafting atmospheres that evoke positive emotions. Achieving this starts with understanding how the human brain perceives sensory cues and how they influence our responses to an environment. To this end, Vibia proposes a new approach to lighting where emotional atmospheres respond to changes in space usage over time, integrating dynamic lighting and advanced control systems. Here, the interaction between texture, form, composition, and light is crucial to align with the needs of each moment.
Effects, Color Temperatures and Moods: Keys to Create Emotionally Comfortable Environments
This approach of human-centric lighting aims to create scenes that promote relaxation, concentration, activation, and socialization. This strategy recognizes that circadian rhythms respond primarily to light, which regulates our physical and mental health. It emphasizes aesthetics while designing functional and adaptive environments based on our interactions with a space over time. The expanded portfolio embedded within it features over 60 collections that combine lighting effects and typologies—diffuse, indirect, and direct light—along with dynamic control and subtle gradients of intensity, tone, and color to suit each context.
Designing wellness-oriented environments utilizes lighting as a formal strategy based on two main axes: time and space. The time axis implies the concept of dynamic light, acknowledging that a space's atmosphere changes throughout the day and is influenced by natural light. Simultaneously, from the perspective of space, lighting allows for subtle adjustments in intensity, environmental perception, and color temperature, creating a natural ambiance tailored to the specific characteristics of each project.
Color moods play a crucial role in both aspects. Artificial light serves a decorative function but can also provide a sensory experience. For example, soft green light evokes the freshness of a sunrise, while orange tones create a cozy warmth. In contrast, more vibrant colors generate dynamic and energizing environments. The desired effect depends on the connection with users and how one balances the sensory and emotional experience with the practical functions of the space.
Lighting Collections for Crafting Ambiance and Optimizing Space Functionality
Among the wide range of options, specific lighting collections stand out for their ability to transform environments, serving as complementary elements rather than competing with one another. Each solution has a distinct purpose and adds unique characteristics to the atmosphere. Thoughtful integration of these elements during the design process results in a cohesive, responsive, and functional experience.
1. The Atmosphere Creators
Designed to facilitate an entire project with a single collection, these systems provide total freedom of composition and harmony in lighting effects, adapting to any environment and unbinding the solution from the architecture. By mixing accent, reflected, and diffuse lighting, these systems—Circus, Bind, and Plusminus— create gradients of light density, allowing designers to play with visual hierarchy and craft different scenes within a space. Circus is characterized by its minimalist structure and distinctive conductive bar. Bind is a hybrid lighting system designed to create multiple atmospheres, accommodating a range of uses and moods. Meanwhile, Plusminus offers a versatile solution that elevates the light rail concept by enabling the free placement of luminaires.
2. Emotion and Materiality
Diffused lighting fosters a sense of warmth and well-being, which has inspired the development of a new category of products based on the innovative use of materials. Knit and Array explore textiles in design, experimenting with light, texture, and materiality through rigorous technical processes. Dama leverages the aesthetic appeal of laminated paper while embracing the distinctive warmth of blown glass found in Lily. Rhythm, on the other hand, combines the natural characteristics of wood with the subtle expression of technology.
3. Complementary Lighting
The complementary collection offers a range of technical and architectural lighting solutions that harmonize with the visual language of Vibia's wider product range. It marks a new era by embracing a more holistic approach to lighting design. By considering the key elements of the interior, the collection—featuring solutions such as Line, Circle, Offset, Dots, Plusminus Solo, Bind Solo, and Circus Solo—creates a visual hierarchy that uses light to direct the gaze and highlight specific aspects of the space. The key lies in finding the right light density, balancing soft and accentuated lighting through a blend of effects.
Ultimately, it is no coincidence that light plays a crucial role in our lives, as it is present in every corner and moment of our activities, with the potential to improve (or worsen) architecture. By creating better spaces, we contribute to individual and collective well-being, enhancing our daily experience and generating shared value in the built environment. This multidimensional vision makes Vibia an ally that provides comprehensive support in shaping atmospheres. From conceptualization and composition to installation and interaction with the end user, the goal is to design for the human experience by combining design, technology, and light, all under a philosophy that places human beings and their emotions at the center.
To learn more about this human-centered approach to emotional design in lighting, visit Vibia's website or browse the product catalog.
