To investigate the usage of colored light in human-robot interaction with the Pepper robot facilitating emotion recognition from bodily expressions, we used this sample of photographed light combinations illuminating the expressions to validate them reflecting the eight inner sub-emotions from Plutchik’s wheel of emotions. For each subemotion, we created three different light combinations based on related works using two Tapo smart lights – one as an ambient and one as a spot light. In total, 24 pictures of the bodily expressions combined with colored light were shot using constant angle and background. Participants assigned emotion labels to pictures included in this repository. For further information please refer to our works referenced in the metadata.