Different light levels

This weekend my aunt, uncle, and cousin came to visit me in Irvine. We went out to Buca di Beppo, which is, of course, highly decorated and, no matter the location, tries to create a homey, familiar feeling. While I’ve always noticed how the excess of decorations and the deep, rich color choices add to the atmosphere, I never realized that the lighting does as well. When we were first sitting down I didn’t really notice the light level. Soon, however, someone slightly turned the lights down in the area where we were sitting. The room immediately seemed smaller and more intimate. This fits with their family-style Italian meals. Dimming the lights both made everyone sitting at the table feel closer to each other, and also seemed to separate our table from the others, so we had a sense of privacy. This also reminds me of when I would eat at Pippin my freshman year; in the mornings, or whenever there were not a lot of people there, they would play music, but when there were a lot of people, they did not. I always got the sense that the music was used to make people feel like they had privacy in their conversations (there was a buss of noise around them, not just silence). When there were a lot of people, and a lot of talking, adding music would have just been too much noise, and the echoing of the voices in the dining area was enough to cover up people’s conversations.

After lunch, when my aunt and cousin came in to see my apartment, I rushed around to turn on every light and open all of the windows, which I never normally do. I realized as I did this that I was trying to make the apartment look as large as possible, and as bright and clean as I could. My apartment has white walls and light tan carpets, so I felt that making it brighter would highlight his. It is interesting how changes in the levels of lighting can greatly change one’s perception of a space. Also, how lighting needs to match a room. Buca di Beppo would look silly if it was brightly lit with a cool colored light, and my apartment would look wrong if it was too dark or lit with too warm of a light.