More and more cities are evolving into smart cities, increasing their attractiveness, energy efficiency, and users’ satisfaction. Lighting systems play an important role in the evolution process, thanks to their ability to affect city life at night along with people’s mood and behaviour. In this scenario, advanced lighting design methods such as virtual reality (VR) became essential to assess lighting systems from different points of view, especially those linked with the city users’ expectations. Initially, the review highlights a list of objective and subjective parameters to be considered for the lighting design of three main city areas/applications: roads, green areas and buildings. Besides, the state-of-art in using VR for outdoor lighting design is established. Finally, the Unreal game engine is used to analyse the ability of VR to take into account the lighting parameters, not yet investigated in current literature and to highlight the VR potential for augmenting lighting design. The results confirm the benefit of using VR in lighting design, even if further investigations are needed to establish its reliability, especially from the photometrical point of view.

Outdoor urban lighting design is a complex issue. It involves multiple aspects (energy consumption, lighting pollution, aesthetics, and safety) that must be balanced to make sustainable decisions. Although the energy and environmental issues assumed a driving role in the optimization of the urban lighting design, its impact on the psychophysical well-being of individuals has received less attention. Artificial lighting has been shown to add several meanings to an individual’s experience of space: affective (affect, emotion, mood), cognitive (attention, imagination, perception), associative (memory, judgment), and motivational (closeness, openness, communication). Traditionally, studies on the effects of lighting on individuals’ emotions have mainly focused on indoor spaces, while the present study aims to investigate the influence of lighting on individuals’ emotions in an outdoor environment. Participants experienced a simulated urban park through virtual reality. Specifically, the urban park was shown with different combinations of overall illuminance (high vs medium vs low) and correlated colour temperature (CCT) (warm vs intermediate vs cool). For each combination, participants were asked to judge how they felt. In general, results showed that high-intensity cool light made participants more nervous, while warm light made individuals feel more tired and less motivated to explore the park. In contrast, an intermediate CCT at low or medium illuminance impacted individuals positively. Finally, it was found that participants’ mood predicted the impact that park lighting would have on them. These results suggest that assessing the influence of lighting on individuals’ emotions allows the decision-makers to implement the type of artificial lighting that will simultaneously safeguard both the well-being of individuals and the environment.