Human-Centric Lighting
It’s 3pm. You’re groggy and your vision blurs as you stare at a computer screen. You go grab another cup of coffee, believing it will increase your productivity. Then later that night you lie awake. “Maybe it’s the coffee I drank too late in the day?” You repeat the next day, getting less work done from cutting back on the coffee, but find yourself still awake at night. The culprit could be your lighting, and human-centric lighting solutions could be just what you need to feel more alert, productive, happier, and healthier.
What is Human-Centric Lighting?
Human-centric lighting is the art of creating lighting that replicates sunlight to enhance human health, happiness, and performance. Human-centric lighting balances the visual, emotional, and biological needs of people using lighting.
Lighting’s Impact on Human Health
Lighting has a significant impact on our health. Certain lighting can strain our eyes, impact our mental health, and overall wellbeing.
Modern LED lighting technology can be uniquely adjusted to be human-centric, optimizing educational, office, and healthcare facilities, to improve the lives of occupants by matching their circadian rhythm.
We spend a significant portion of our lives indoors, so our circadian rhythm is highly affected by indoor lighting’s quality.
Quantity of Light
The circadian rhythm is an internal sleep and awake cycle in people. It’s constantly running in the back of your brain, affecting how sleepy or alert you are. This circadian rhythm responds to the quantity of lightness and darkness happening around you. When you get too much or too little light at different parts of the day it can affect our behavior, how well we sleep, and our overall health.
Color of Light
The circadian rhythm also responds to the color of light. Scientists agree that lighting should replicate sunlight. If your building has areas without windows, it’s best to replicate the sunlight by using blue light during the day and amber light towards the evening. When deciding the color of your lighting, you need to create a balance.
Too much blue light and people struggle to sleep at night. Not enough blue light in your facility leads to exhausted students, restless patients, and unproductive employees. Now your building occupants are sleepy and sad, mass chugging coffee at 3pm.
Lighting and Productivity in Facilities
Lighting doesn’t only affect our personal wellbeing and productivity. On a larger scale, not investing in your facility’s lighting system could result in huge profit losses from lower productivity of building occupants.
Use Case: Educational Facilities
LED lighting has been proven to enhance the learning environment. Researchers at the South Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology found that lighting can be optimized to improve test scores.
The study found LED lights, that replicate sunlight, improved test scores by making students feel more alert. Lighting can also be adjusted to boost reading comprehension.
Use Case: In the Office
Light quality can affect an employee’s ability to complete tasks.
Research in Amsterdam has shown after installing better quality lighting, employees have improved work accuracy by 12%, 76% of employees felt happier, and 50% felt healthier. Additionally, employees perceive an 18% increase in productivity with better quality lighting.
Use Case: Healthcare Facilities
The Center for Health Design has proven that exposure to quality LED Lighting is essential for the health and wellness of patients, and staff, in healthcare facilities.
Human-centric LED lighting also impacts perceptions of wellness at senior living and healthcare facilities. People suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s diseases have reduced depression, agitation, and falls when exposed to quality LED light.
Additionally LED lighting that replicates sunlight, can help patients in healthcare facilities sleep better, possibly resulting in a speedier recovery.
Unify LED Lighting Solutions
With Unify Lighting Solutions, existing facilities are given a new life with our modern lighting systems. We create customizable solutions according to your facility’s needs. We consider the details such as existing natural sunlight, the comfort of building occupants, and energy efficiency.
With high-efficiency lighting systems built on Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, we enable you to save on costs by reducing electrical consumption by 30% to 40%.
Contact us today to get started on an efficient and scalable efficient lighting system!
Sources
Buildings: What You Need to Know About Human-Centric Lighting
Global Human-Centric Lighting Market Report