Appropriate Washstand Lighting for Applying Makeup

This study aims to determine the appropriate lighting conditions for applying makeup. We presumed that applying makeup includes two tasks : ‘base makeup’, i.e., foundation and cheek rouge ; and ‘point makeup’, i.e., mascara and lip rouge. The brightness or visibility of one's face, and the task performance of applying makeup in different lighting conditions is reported. We conducted a subjective experiment on the lighting condition of a washstand in a bathroom. The washstand used in the experiment was equipped with four fluorescent lamps or two incandescent lamps, enabling varying conditions of illuminance on the face, light color, and lighting of the mirror to be presented. Twenty subjects observed their faces under 32 lighting conditions, and they evaluated the “brightness of one's face”, “visibility of features of one's face”, “visibility of shadows”, “glare of lighting”, “discomfort of glare”, “annoyance of shadow”, “task performance”, and “satisfaction” after applying both base makeup and point makeup. In the evaluation results, “task performance” and “satisfaction” in base makeup were clearly higher when the illuminance on the face was high. “Task performance” and “satisfaction” in point makeup were also clearly higher when the mirror was lit from all four sides or from vertical sides by fluorescent lamps than when the lighting was from above and below.