Bon Appetit! An Investigation About Color Combination Between Lighting and Food

Abstract

We investigated an interaction effect between lighting color and food color that stimulates or discourages one’s appetite. Facilitated by the LED (light-emitting diode) as an additional chromatic lighting source, observers selected the best and worst lighting colors by themselves using a “Mini Living Colors (PhilipsTM)” in the preliminary test (N = 30) and then color picker software in the main experiment (N = 30). Food stimuli were composed of two aspects, type—natural or processed—and complexity—low or high, and consequently they were grouped into four categories. We measured the selected lighting color in terms of chromaticity and illumination level, and analyzed the best and worst combinations based on these measurements. Throughout the two empirical studies, we found three tendencies: First, except for the white, yellow lighting stimulates while red and blue discourages one’s appetite. Second, when color categories of lighting and food are similar to each other, it stimulates the appetite whereas complementary, it discourages it. Third, the type of food does not act as an influencing factor.