Effects of Spectral Component of Light on Appearance of Skin of Woman’s Face with Make-up

This study aims to clarify which spectral component is critical for preferable appearance of the skin of the women ʼ s faces in daily lives. We conducted a subjective experiment on the appearance of a woman ʼ s face with make-up. We created spectral distributions by adding or cutting a specific wavelength on a flat spectral distribution with a wavelength programmable light source. We set up 53 kinds of lighting conditions with different spectral distributions in total. We measured the skin color of the face of the female model, and transformed measured chromaticity values into RGB values of a calibrated LC-display for generating the digital images of the lower half of the face. Twenty female participants observed the cheek illuminated by one of lights with different spectral distributions and evaluated the “ naturalness ” , “ activity ” , “ sophistication ” , “ health ” , “ familiarity ” and “ preference ” of the face. The results show that the lighting including the spectral component of 534 nm makes look the women ʼ s skin worst, and the preference of women ʼ s face can be explained with three aspects, naturalness, activity and sophistication.