After months of planning, building, and testing, the lighting setup for my Correlated Color Temperature and Flow study is in place. The study design is finalized, the study software is built and tested, and we can now produce the lighting conditions at the center of this research.

That progress owes a great deal to Steve Paolini and Telelumen, who donated the programmable luminaire and software that make this work possible. Using the Octa Light Player, we can control the light spectrum and reproduce the conditions we want to compare.

The study examines three lighting conditions: warm light at 2500 K and two cool-light conditions at 6500 K, with lower and higher melanopic content. Those two cool conditions let us explore differences in the spectrum while keeping the same color temperature. This helps us investigate how both the appearance and spectral content of room lighting relate to flow and alertness.

As participants work, physiological measurements, including heart rate and heart-rate variability, will be considered alongside their reports of flow and sleepiness. The question is whether particular lighting conditions make it easier to become deeply absorbed in a task, and how that experience is reflected in the body’s responses.

Thank you again to Steve and Telelumen for helping turn the study design into a working research setup. You can learn more about the lighting conditions and the project on my CCT research page.