How to make your home healthier with smart lighting

Lighting affects our health and wellness and, when used well, can improve mood and mindset and even boost productivity. With more of us working from home, upgrading your lighting may be on your home improvement wish list.

If so, consider some of today’s healthier and smarter lighting strategies. Here are four worth a look.

1. Daylighting

Daylighting means using natural sunlight to illuminate a space, and it can make your home a happier place. Research suggests that sunlight helps the brain produce serotonin, a mood-lifting chemical — which helps explain why so many of us feel good on sunny days.

Increasing the amount of daylight in your home can even reduce symptoms of seasonal affective disorder such as low energy, lack of focus and feeling blue.

Another benefit of daylighting is that it can reduce electricity consumption, which saves energy and therefore reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

One potential downside of daylighting is that skylights and windows can produce large, high-contrast shafts of light that make some tasks — like reading — difficult. 

One of the ways of avoiding direct sunshine in workspaces, places where you are trying to read something, screens that you are trying to look at, is to bounce the light off the architecture or diffuse it through window coverings to make it softer, diffused light.

Another way to bring daylight into your home is with sun tunnels, also known as solar tubes. These tubes are lined with a reflective film that channels light from an opening in the roof through ducts that run inside the ceiling.

Sun tunnels are a clever way to transport daylight to darker areas of the home where a skylight or window wouldn’t be feasible. They’re also easier to install than skylights as they require less carpentry work.

2. Circadian Lighting

Our bodies have a master clock, known as our circadian rhythm, that regulates our sleep-wake cycle and keeps us in sync with the 24-hour cycles of the sun. When it’s dark, the brain responds by producing melatonin, which makes us sleepy. During the daytime, these signals are suppressed.

Circadian lighting design aims to work in harmony with the body’s master clock by imitating the sun’s natural cycle. This includes mimicking the colour and intensity of sunlight as it changes throughout the day: warm amber light at sunrise slowly changes to a cooler, brighter light during the afternoon, before warming back into an amber light at sunset.

One simple way to introduce circadian lighting in your home is with clever lightbulbs. Look for smart lighting products which have three modes: daytime, nighttime and in-between.

The daytime mode emits a very white light meant to emulate daylight. The nighttime mode is more like sunset or candlelight and signals the end of the day. And the in-between mode acts as a midpoint between the two settings and is best used in the early morning (before sunrise).

3. Biophilic Lighting

Like circadian lighting, biophilic lighting mimics nature. Designers use biophilic lighting to connect us to the natural world and to create a healthy living environment. The goal is to experience some of the benefits of being outdoors without leaving your home.

To that end, innovative product designers are combining organic elements with indoor lighting to create designs with an outdoorsy feel.

4. Smart Lighting Systems

Smart lighting systems are another way to achieve healthy lighting at home. These systems use technology to control multiple layers of light: task lighting, accent lighting and ambient lighting.

Many smart lighting systems that control these layers of light work with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and can be managed remotely with an app on your phone or tablet. Often, they can also be combined with other home-automation devices for a complete smart home system.

Smart lighting systems and devices come priced for a range of budgets and are produced by many manufacturers, from Philips to Ikea. And if you happen to run a smart home hub, many of these systems connect with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant or Sonos.

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This article via Houzz does not constitute advice; readers should seek independent and personalised counsel from a trusted adviser that specialises in property, a tax accountant and property design specialist.