Light and colour in the built environment

In the Book of Genesis there is a dramatic change in the world when God says: Fiat Lux (Let there be light)! Chaos was ended. In our everyday life when we hear a noise while asleep at night, we are afraid because there is no light, and if there is no light we don’t see anything, i.e., we do not know. When we turn on the light, everything around us gets organized: light ends the chaos of darkness. In fact, we rely more than 80% on our sight sense to bring us what is happening around us. Light is the genesis of visual perception, and colour is its vehicle. We understand the world around us by the organization of colour stimuli received by our eyes, transmitted to our brain and interpreted there. We can say that colour is the form of space because it is through colour that we perceive the limits and the forms of our environment. Therefore, colour should be studied, together with light, its origin, as the main actor in space perception, and therefore in architecture. With these assumptions in mind, we have to distinguish between Inherent Colour and Perceived Colour. The first is the colour of the surfaces, which could be read by a colorimeter, without the interference of the human perception or the outside lighting conditions. The second is the colour perceived by the human being, always different according to three variables: light, the observer and the surface. If any of these variables change, the perception will be different: if the light changes its position, or its characteristics, if the observer moves to another place or looks in a different direction, if the surface is placed under or above the observer, or with a different angle, etc. Our work as Colour Consultant proves that the knowledge of this continuous variation in colour perception is a tool that we can use to design better spaces for human life and comfort.