Impact of the choice of different walls’ finishing and light scenes

In recent years in the interior design practice the tendency to paint walls with intense colours has increased. This trend is not only merely an esthetical choice but it may also have a significant effect on the spectral distribution of the light that reaches an users' eye, thus affecting his/her perception of the environment. This may also have an impact on users' comfort, since a given combination of light sources with a certain spectral power distribution (SPD) with a specific walls' colour may determine an unpleasant environment and also visual discomfort. For these reasons the choice of walls' finishing and colour has to be made according to that of the lighting system. Therefore this paper aims to analyze the impact of the use of different walls' colours on the spectral distribution of the light that hits the eyes of an user located inside an environment, for this purpose light scenes with different correlated colour temperatures (CCTs) were set up (2700 K, 3000 K, 4500 K and 6500 K). Moreover a previous research by the authors demonstrated that there is a good correlation between hue values calculated with the CIECAM02 colour appearance model and hue values reported by subjects. Therefore this model will be applied to investigate if and how the colour attributes of the walls vary when changing the light scene. A great variation in these attributes may indicate that also people's perception of the environment may change when using a given wall's colour or another, obviously to support such results tests on subjects are needed and will be carried out in the future.