Is Lothlorien shady/moody or full of light?

[Eriol_Eandur]

Recently there was some discussion about the ambience of Lothlorien. So here are some passages from The Fellowship of the Ring:
First Lothlorien is often refered as the Golden Wood:

'There lie the woods of Lothlorien!' said Legolas. 'That is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people. There are no trees like the trees of that land. For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold. Not till the spring comes and the new green opens do they fall, and then the boughs are laden with yellow flowers; and the floor of the wood is golden, and golden is the roof, and its pillars are of silver, for the bark of the trees is smooth and grey.'

Even during night time there is a shimmer of gold:

The night-wind blew chill up the valley to meet them. Before them a wide grey shadow loomed, and they heard an endless rustle of leaves like poplars in the breeze. 'Lothlorien!' cried Legolas. 'Lothlorien! We have come to the eaves of the Golden Wood. Alas that it is winter!' Under the night the trees stood tall before them, arched over the road and stream that ran suddenly beneath their spreading boughs. In the dim light of the stars their stems were grey, and their quivering leaves a hint of fallow gold.

'Of this stream the Silvan Elves made many songs long ago, and still we sing them in the North, remembering the rainbow on its falls, and the golden flowers that floated in its foam.

Don't forget that all these obeservations are made in the middle of Winter, the Fellowship came to Lothlorien at January 15th.

Day came pale from the East. As the light grew it filtered through the yellow leaves of the mallorn, and it seemed to the hobbits that the early sun of a cool summer's morning was shining. Pale-blue sky peeped among the moving branches. Looking through an opening on the south side of the flet Frodo saw all the valley of the Silverlode lying like a sea of fallow gold tossing gently in the breeze.

'Not even to see fair Lothlorien?' said Haldir. 'The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair,

Here is the Ringbearers sensing of the ambience of Lothlorien:

As soon as he (Frodo) set foot upon the far bank of Silverlode a strange feeling had come upon him, and it deepened as he walked on into the Naith: it seemed to him that he had stepped over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days, and was now walking in a world that was no more. In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lorien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world. Evil had been seen and heard there, sorrow had been known; the Elves feared and distrusted the world outside; wolves were howling on the wood's borders; but on the land of Lorien no shadow lay.

Cerin Amroth:

To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Spring-time in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. High amid the branches of a towering tree that stood in the centre of all there gleamed a white flet. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees.

The following quote is most clear:

It seemed to him (Frodo) that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien there was no stain.

Sam feels the same and puts it into plain words:

'It's sunlight and bright day, right enough,' he said. 'I thought that Elves were all for moon and stars: but this is more elvish than anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as if I was inside a song, if you take my meaning.'
Haldir looked at them, and he seemed indeed to take the meaning of both thought and word. He smiled. 'You feel the power of the Lady of the Galadhrim,' he said.

Frodo standing on top of Cerin Amroth looks at Caras Galadhon:

Frodo looked and saw, still at some distance, a hill of many mighty trees, or a city of green towers: which it was he could not tell. Out of it, it seemed to him that the power and light came that held all the land in sway. He longed suddenly to fly like a bird to rest in the green city. Then he looked eastward and saw all the land of Lorien running down to the pale gleam of Anduin, the Great River. He lifted his eyes across the river and all the light went out, and he was back again in the world he knew.

... all the light went out. What desription could be more clear.
And a last one, when the Fellowship left Lothlorien:

Suddenly the River swept round a bend, and the banks rose upon either side, and the light of Lorien was hidden.

 

[slaMoria]

My god ! How long did it take to do that thread ? It's really good.

 

[ryttyr]

Well to me it sounds like Lothlorien has almost like a light of its own. Perhaps we could put end rods with completely transparent textures around the trees and canopies to make them glow? I mean, end rods are most likely unused in Lothlorien anyways considering how old that build is.
Either way, at the very least it has to be light enough beneath the canopies for flowers to bloom beneath the trees (in the middle of winter to boot)

 

[Ardelenia]

Thanks Eriol, impressed as usual by your thoroughness. I guess we need to retexture some block as "intangible feeling of wholesomeness" and scatter it around lothlorien.

 

[Fireinferno13]

Thanks Eriol, impressed as usual by your thoroughness. I guess we need to retexture some block as "intangible feeling of wholesomeness" and scatter it around lothlorien.

Otherwise known as default stone duh