Natural Light: a Naturalness Bias in Lighting

A naturalness bias has been defined as ‘a preference for things perceived as natural’. This paper makes a first attempt at answering the question whether a naturalness bias exist in the context of lighting, and whether people’s sense of personal connection to nature and their beliefs towards different types of lighting affect its occurrence. This exploratory paper uses four studies to evaluate the effectiveness of two paradigms of measuring a naturalness bias in the context of lighting. Results indicate that the two presented paradigms did not reliably measure a naturalness bias in the context of lighting. People’s connectedness to nature and beliefs towards different light kinds were reliably and validly measured, providing future research with a good frame of reference for evaluating the effectiveness of other paradigms of measuring a naturalness bias in the context of lighting.