Mood lighting

"[5] Deliberate manipulation of ambient lighting is common in indoor or public places where a specific action is intended to be promoted.

In 2017, Qantas started Project Sunrise, a series of non-stop, ultra-long-haul flights from Australia’s east coast to London and New York that would include in-plane features aimed at minimizing jetlag and improving customer wellbeing.

The trial produced a series of 12 unique lighting scenes that would be used for project Sunrise flights with the 3 main ones being: Awake, blue lighting to promote awakeness among passengers; Sunset - an immersive transition from daytime mode into dark that gradually imitates the colors of a natural sunset into a night sky including moonlight and a snow effect; and Sunrise - a gradual transition from night to day.

"[7][8] Besides passenger wellbeing, the experiment also recorded crew and pilot energy and alertness levels in response to the changes in the ambient lighting.

Melatonin release increases during evening hours to promote sleep and decreases during daylight to encourage alertness – something that is lost when rapidly crossing multiple time zones in a jet."

Electrical engineer Eric Johannessen also stated, “a specific blue wavelength that helps to keep us alert during the daytime is removed from the color mix during boarding.

[citation needed] An article by the New York Times states that dim, red light offers a unique juxtaposition with the normalcy and brightness of outside ambience, thus it "embrace[s...] darkroom-core as a way to signal a transition to a nocturnal atmosphere."

Additionally, the studies demonstrated that darkness elicits a feeling of being free from constraints and triggers a risky, explorative processing style.