Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/techno...

Above the scene, for all intents and purposes, is a skylight, maybe a meter by a meter-and-a-half. Within and above it is a glowing orb which, if it’s not the sun, is doing a reasonable facsimile of Ol’ Sol. I will later learn that the illuminating effect is identical. The only difference is that, for the time being, it stays in one place and does not traverse an imaginary sky. It is a sophisticated lamp that just happens to think it’s the sun.

This is no case of merely pretending that one is outside, as in vast, open areas in Las Vegas casinos where huge trompe l’oeil ceilings and self-dimming lights suggest that one is in Venice or Caesar’s Rome, with real-time lighting changes. In those situations, you still know that you’re watching a glorified lightshow. This is CoeLux's lighting system, a gloom dissipater and installation that's initially as disconcerting as suddenly being turned upside down. It’s like walking into another dimension.

It is not a sunlamp. You will not tan, and I doubt your photo-chromatic glasses will dim. But your brain will incontrovertibly believe that you are in a room in Portofino in August, or Miami in September. And your brain quickly tells you how this has a gazillion possibilities and applications, like changing the atmosphere in that games room you installed in your basement, the one you don’t spend as much time in as you thought you would because there’s something amiss. And that something is sunlight.

CoeLux is described succinctly as “an optical system that recreates the sun and the sky in spaces that would otherwise be devoid of light.