Immersive lighting design transforms the vehicle cabin

If the car is now a ‘third living space’ after the home and the office, its lighting still has some catching up to do given in-cabin lighting often overlooks the personal needs of its occupants. Karl Weinhold, managing director of Feno, makes the case for immersive interior lighting and shows how thoughtful design know-how and use of LEDs is driving its adoption across mainstream automotive implementation. In this context, leveraging innovation from LED lighting pioneers such as Nichia has become increasingly important not only for light quality but also for efficiency, controllability, and compact packaging.

“Collaboration between academia and industry will lead to striking lighting effects”

Smart lighting and advanced display systems are transforming the vehicle interior into an interactive space. Karlheinz Blankenbach – founder of the Display Lab at Pforzheim University – explains how digital LEDs, metrology, and human visual effects will drive the next wave of intelligent, energy-efficient in-car experiences.

Benjamin Müller

Three pillars of automotive lighting design

It's no coincidence that the industry talks about light being “the new chrome” but its impact goes far beyond simple differentiation between car models. Indeed, automotive lighting can be categorized into three key pillars: brand experience, functional, and immersive. Brand experience lighting expresses the identity of the carmaker inside and outside the vehicle, adding a distinct signature of light experience beyond comfort, performance and efficiency. Functional lighting takes care of safety, operation and clear communication. Immersive lighting, by contrast, is about how people feel in the car, charging people with biophilic and biological impulses to create a more positive, supportive environment. From a technology perspective, these key pillars increasingly rely on automotive-grade LED performance with excellence required in color stability, tight binning, long lifetime, and controlled thermal behavior.

Immersive lighting adapts to mood and usage

You will recognize those moments when you get into a car already tired, a bit stressed and not able to concentrate. Maybe it’s dark and the weather is bad. The last thing you need is an uncomfortable and distracting in-cabin environment. Then the same car that that takes you to and from your office switches roles to become a family car for a weekend trip or a quick dash to the shops. Your needs and your mood change completely, and the interior lighting should adapt with you to support that shift in energy and emotion. That’s exactly where immersive lighting comes into its own.

One of several exciting concepts is color associations from nature and their impact on people. Think of the feeling of walking through a forest, seeing cherry blossoms in spring, or being out on a clear winter day in the mountains. Experiences like these leave us with very specific impressions of color and light. We pick up on those associations and translate them into immersive interior lighting in a car that helps people feel calmer and more alert. As you may expect, to deliver these effects consistently across various areas and surfaces, designers increasingly lean on proven LEDs for stable chromaticity and repeatable color mixing.

Light art as a source of inspiration for interior design

For creative input, much of the thinking for feno draws on light art, particularly the work of American artist James Turrell. The company has collaborated with Turrell on projects around the world for more than two decades, and this background in light art encourages a view of light that goes beyond simple illumination, orientation, or signage, towards something that actively shapes how an interior feels and how people experience it.

Of course, the question arises: What does light art do in the car? It makes the difference. The high-performance technology and techniques from light art are what make immersive interior concepts possible in the first place.

The spectral mix, stability and controllability of the LEDs are just as important as the creative idea for how the cabin should feel. Additionally, high-quality light sources with strong color rendering are essential, particularly when accurate materials and finishes are part of the brand experience inside a vehicle. The LEDs must have a high Color Rendering Index (CRI), which is a measure of how accurately a light source renders the true colors of objects and surfaces, including materials like leather or wood. This helps reveal fine details that might otherwise be lost. Achieving uniform color effects across different surfaces enables interior designers to create more holistic and harmonious design schemes.

How the vehicle cockpit is being redefined in 2026

From projected interfaces to AI-driven assistance: at the start of 2026, automakers and suppliers are showing how the vehicle cockpit is evolving into a more software-centric and user-focused environment.

Ronja Schmiedchen

Control electronics for dynamic lighting functions

As vehicles introduce more dynamic and personalized lighting functions, control electronics must keep pace. Automotive networks are now capable of addressing large numbers of LEDs individually and at high speed, enabling smooth transitions and coordinated light scenes across the interior. This level of control will only grow in importance as lighting takes on more of a role in the way occupants feel, focus and interact with their environment.

Advanced, high-efficiency RGB LEDs with a built-in low-power driver IC are now available specifically for automotive interiors. They come in very compact packages so they fit into tight spaces and they keep the color output consistent which is important to achieve a uniform lighting effect throughout the cabin.

Nichia’s Blendlite is an RGB LED solution that integrates a dedicated driver IC and is specifically engineered for automotive interior lighting, offering high and uniform color quality, excellent color mixing, low power consumption, and a compact form factor that simplifies circuit design while supporting high-quality ambient and accent lighting.

Components must be compact and flexible

Lighting components also need to be compact and flexible enough to integrate into tight spaces and follow complex interior shapes and any contours. Recent developments in flat light-guide technology, for example, allow uniform light to be delivered through very thin structures and can be formed to suit almost any contour within the cabin. In premium vehicles with initially smaller volumes this route can quickly lead to the desired result with very low development costs and quick turnaround times. In tight geometries like door trims and instrument panels, combining thin light guides with automotive-grade LEDs (such as those from Nichia) can reduce color banding and improve uniformity.

Biophilic lighting achieves measurable effects

Human-centric lighting (HCL) has become a regular theme in recent projects, with designers looking more closely at how light affects people’s physiology and temperament. The starting point is natural daylight: if indoor LED lighting can mimic some of its key characteristics, it can help support comfort, concentration and general wellbeing.

In practice, most HCL today is delivered by varying the correlated color temperature (CCT) over the course of the day. Cooler white light in the morning, typically around 5500–5800 K, gradually gives way to warmer tones in the evening, closer to 2700 K, as yellow and red wavelengths become more dominant. This follows the visible change we experience outdoors and is relatively straightforward to implement with tunable white LED systems.

Conventional indoor lighting is still relatively weak around 480 nm, a wavelength that is abundant in morning sunlight and closely linked to non-visual responses. Adding more targeted light in this band can help support serotonin activity and circadian rhythms, improving alertness and helping people feel better aligned with the time of day.

Dynasolis as an example of spectrally tuned lighting

It is interesting to see LED manufacturers now offering spectrum-tunable solutions with enhanced output around 480 nm. Independent studies, including work at Fraunhofer IBP, show that light in this band can influence alertness, attention and relaxation in interior environments. Figure 2 compares the spectra at the same CCT (6500 K) for a conventional tunable-white approach and a spectrum-tuned solution. The difference around 480 nm – near the peak of the melanopic sensitivity curve, where light is most relevant for serotonin-related responses (dashed yellow line) – is clearly visible in the comparison.

Recent development work at feno has resulted in a lighting system powered by Nichia’s Dynasolis solution, which combines the company’s Azure and H6 LEDs, to support occupants’ serotonin balance and help maintain alertness. Initially developed for architectural and wellbeing applications, this approach is now also being explored for use in vehicles.

Looking ahead to autonomous driving, where the cabin increasingly becomes a place to work or relax, carefully controlled interior lighting could also play a role in reducing motion sickness and improving overall comfort.

‘Biophilic Mood Lighting’ promises great potential for passengers during long journeys.

Conclusion

Wherever automotive technology goes next one constant is that people still spend a lot of time inside their cars. That keeps the human side of vehicle design firmly on the agenda. And as LED performance improves and control electronics become more capable, the future of immersive interior lighting looks bright.

Immersive interior lighting together with biophilic and biologically informed lighting is redefining the way light is used in the car – and with it, the brand experience. Light can respond to people's changing needs and support them emotionally and energetically.

Questions about power, speed, range and overall performance will not disappear, but they will sit alongside another, equally relevant one: ‘When you’re inside your car, how does it make you feel?’

This article was produced in collaboration with Feno and Nichia.

“Light will be functionally integrated into the workflow”

Light in the vehicle interior is increasingly becoming an intelligent interface: Stefan Menninger from Preh explains how interdisciplinary thinking, embedded software, and system integration enable the next generation of connected interior lighting.

Benjamin Müller