Everything You Need To Know About Ambient Lighting

4 April 2022

Everything you need to know about Ambient Lighting in the Mercedes-Benz

The Mercedes-Benz vehicles have been revolutionised in their interior design. Gone are the days when a car was just used to travel back and forth. The need for luxurious comfort, stylish design, the latest technology, and smooth and easy driveability is what drives contemporary car sales. Mercedes-Benz took this into its own hands and produced a feature that has reformed the way the auto industry designs and produces cars. The ambient lighting is standard on A 250 4MATICC with AMG Line and A 35 4MATIC. On other models, the ambient lighting is an optional extra/premium package add-on. The ambient lighting can be included from the A-Class all the way up to the G-Class. But, the question arises… What is ambient lighting actually used for? Ambient lighting is intended to light up a room in its entirety. It provides colourful illumination throughout the whole of the car.

Controlling The Ambient Lighting

There are two ways to control the ambient lighting in a Mercedes-Benz car and the first is through the MBUX system. This stands for Mercedes-Benz User Experience. This useful and intuitive infotainment system gives access to all of the car’s settings. To access the lighting you need to scroll to the settings app, then proceed to vehicle settings, then light settings, then ambient light settings. Once you have reached this point, go to the colours and then the vehicle will give you a range of 64 colours to choose from. In the same section on the MBUX settings system, you can adjust the brightness. Another handy feature that can be controlled through the same system is brightness zones. You can control different areas of the car and how bright you would want them to be. For example, if you are driving at night and do not want to be easily distracted by bright light then I would suggest altering the front and display ambient lighting to a lower brightness and keeping the rear brightness at an average level.

The second way to control the ambient lighting is through voice activation. For example, if you state ‘Hey Mercedes, change the ambient lighting to green’, the lighting will change. Mercedes-Benz introduced linguatronic technology for their voice control in the MBUX system. This innovative technology allows for commands to be formulated and executed with voice entry and I believe that this feature comes in incredibly useful for not becoming distracted when on the road. Using this feature or the MBUX control system you can change the ambient lighting to use more than one colour at a time in the car. The multi-colour setting offers 10 different presets to choose from. These presets can be animated using the multi-colour animation effect. This takes the two colours that you have selected and gradually swaps the two colours over and moves around the car. The only issue we have found with this feature is that it takes a while for you to notice the movement or that anything has happened at all. However, towards the end of your journey period, you will notice that the colours have swapped over. Personally, I think that this is a smart idea made by Mercedes-Benz to have the multi-coloured effect swap at this pace as if it were to move fast around the car then you would be easily distracted or even become car sick from the motion.

Other Ambient Lighting Features

Another effect that Mercedes-Benz has included in the ambient lighting is the Welcome Effect. This shows a white light when you unlock and get into the car. The BMW iX has something similar in its unlock and lock system. When locking the car it changed to red inside the door frame close to the window, when unlocked the same place changes its ambient lighting to green. Similar to this is the Climate Effect in the Mercedes-Benz. This changes the lights from blue or red depending on how hot or cold the car is. This is based on the AC/heating.

Comparing Mercedes-Benz Ambient Lighting to other car brands

Some companies provide subtle ambient lighting. Such as Nissan, Infiniti, Honda, and Acura. However, on the other end of the spectrum, we find of course Mercedes-Benz, but also, BMW and Porsche. Or, in their own league altogether is Rolls Royce. With the starry-night roof and surrounding doors. Adding elegance and brightness throughout the entirety of the vehicle. The ambient lighting varies depending on what Mercedes model it is. So for the GLB 200, the settings are the same functionality-wise, however, the interior is slightly different physically so the ambient lighting is in different places compared to a car like an A-Class. The ambient lighting or the GLB 200 can be seen on the dash and the centre console but there’s not a lot going on, on the roof or the back of the vehicle. Whereas the S500 has ambient lighting in every nook and cranny you can possibly think of in the car. The GLB 200 has the full-colour wheel, the multi-colour settings, welcome effects, and climate settings but the majority of these features are noticeable in the front of the vehicle. So if you’re looking for ambient lighting all over the car then I suggest going for a premium package if this doesn’t come as a standard in your Mercedes vehicle.

Thank you

We also write blog posts reviewing new releases of cars. Be sure to head over to our news section of the website to explore these. If this blog has spiked your interest in owning a car with Ambient Lighting then please contact us and we will be able to source this directly for you.