Buick’s Use of Ambient Lighting in Luxury Vehicles

Today’s luxury vehicles boast a host of features that didn’t exist even a few years ago: adjustable petals, remote start, key-less entry, and air conditioned seats. Luxury car makers, including BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and Bentley, continue to include more advanced features on their vehicles each year. Ambient lighting is one of the newest features that has come to define vehicle luxury, and car enthusiasts can find this luxury element in a somewhat surprising place: Buick.

Buick is quickly making a comeback in the automobile industry and has turned into GM’s luxury brand. Beginning in 2009, Buick produced a car that featured ambient lighting. Its LaCrosse had a strip of ambient lighting that circled the dashboard. Buick’s foray into ambient lighting resulted from years of research into the use of lighting in interior design. In extravagant homes, special soft lighting was used to set the mood and offer subtle illumination.

Buick’s designers and engineers applied the same concepts to the creation of their vehicles’ interiors. The result was lighting that enhanced the driving experience by creating an inviting interior. The warmth of the ice blue ambient lighting complements the lights of the car’s gauges. Blue hues have a lower color saturation and are easier on the eyes, which can create a serene mood.

In fact, balance is one of the goals of the use of ambient lighting. Many high-end vehicles have multiple lighting sources: custom car gauges, navigational systems, and televisions. As these elements multiply – or, in the case of television screens, grow in size – more bright light envelops a car’s interior. One of the roles of ambient lighting is to bring balance to the existing light in a car.

Today, every Buick vehicle has ambient lighting, and the company is looking for ways to use lighting in new ways. The 2013 Buick Enclave model will feature LED lighting inside its cabin. Both LED and traditional ambient lighting serves a number of purposes. From a purely visual standpoint, lighting highlights specific features of the car’s interior and can set a specific mood for the driver and passengers. At night, lighting illuminates frequently-used elements, such as a door handle or beverage holder.

The process of incorporating ambient lighting into a car’s interior is a process puts designers and engineers working in tandem. The lighting strips have to be placed into the interior, and then the car’s trim must be cut so that the light can shine through. The placement of the lighting and the LED strength has to be perfected to create the kind of experience luxury car owners are looking for, all while maintaining automotive industry standards.

With the addition of LED ambient lighting to its vehicles, Buick is taking the idea of the luxury car to the next level.