Designing in daylight, checking at night

My studio has big windows facing west. In the morning the light is cool and even, in the afternoon it turns warm and low. For years I picked colours at different times of day without thinking about it, and then wondered why a beige that looked perfect on Tuesday looked pink on Thursday.

The eye adapts to the light around it and quietly corrects colours for you. A screen does not, and neither does a printed box on a shop shelf under cheap lighting. What you see while designing is only one version of the truth.

Now every colour decision gets checked twice: once in daylight and once at night, under the warm lamp on my desk. If a colour only works in one of the two, it is not ready. For packaging I add a third check under the kind of light the shop actually uses, which is often much colder than you expect.

It is the same idea behind the day and night switch on this website. A design should hold up in both kinds of light, because the people who see it live in both.

You do not need expensive equipment. A daylight bulb, a warm lamp and a printed sample on the real paper are enough to catch most problems before they reach the printer. The rest is patience and a second look.