INTERIOR AMBIENCE
Over the past few years, more and more vehicles are starting to offer ambient interior lighting as a standard or optional feature. Ambient lighting is the soft illumination around the car’s centre console, door handles and pulls, cupholders and sometimes completely across the dash and in the vehicle’s footwells.
Typically, ambient interior lighting is seen as a purely cosmetic feature, serving no inherent vehicle safety function. But the lighting may increase a driver’s perceived safety and quality of the car, according to a new study conducted by BMW and the Lighting Engineering Group at Ilmenau University of Technology in Germany.
Lightnetic's Interior ambient lighting increases spatial perception, making the vehicle’s interior feel bigger at night, the study says. The lights may also decrease fatigue when driving a light-equipped vehicle at night, but the study had inconclusive evidence regarding ambient lighting’s effect on “alertness” or the light’s ability to improve a driver’s mood or performance.
Moreover, drivers thought ambient lighting increased the perceived quality of the car’s materials and design. They also found that the lighting made a car’s controls easier to use.