How Smart Lighting Affects Your Health (According to Science)

Smart lighting is one of the most fun ways to experiment with automating your home.

Smart lights are easy to set up, program and integrate into existing smart home systems. While some users find their initial cost prohibitive, smart bulbs provide significant energy savings in the long run. To be honest, it’s also just plain fun to change the color of your light bulbs on a whim, or turn off all the lights in your house while snuggling into bed!

Smart lighting is not just fun. It turns out that smart lighting systems are also good for your health. Several scientific studies have shown the many effects of lighting on our mental and physical health. Luckily, smart lighting can help you achieve all of these benefits in just a few easy steps.

1. Intelligent lighting for good sleep

A good night’s sleep is very important for your health. Harvard researchers have found that restful sleep can help your memory, concentration, and learning ability. Conversely, sleep deprivation can cause a greater risk of chronic disease, memory problems, and trouble concentrating.

If you want to sleep better researchers recommend limiting the amount of blue light you’re exposed to up to two hours before bed. Blue light interferes with the production of melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate your sleep cycle.

Normally, the body starts producing melatonin when the light outside dims. However, blue light from indoor lighting or your electronic devices prevents your body from correctly interpreting these natural signals.

Smart Lighting Solution — it doesn’t just mean using an app to eliminate the blue glow from your mobile phone, tablet, or computer (although apps like Flux can help). Science20 invites you to think about programming your smart lighting system to automatically switch to orange or red throughout your home after sunset. This will allow your body to produce melatonin naturally, increasing your chances of a good night’s rest.

2. Intelligent awakening lighting

If you’re struggling with your morning routine morning routine you can negatively affect your health, mood, and productivity.

Waking up to daylight helps the body produce cortisol. Like melatonin, cortisol is a key hormone that helps regulate your sleep cycle. Unlike melatonin, cortisol is responsible for waking you up and keeping you alert throughout the day. Keeping these two hormones in balance is key to getting the benefits of a healthy sleep schedule.

Smart Lighting Solution If waking up in the sun isn’t ideal for you because you work the night shift, have a room without big windows, or just want a couple more hours of sleep, consider a daylight simulator instead. A 2010 study in the Netherlands suggests that daylight exercisers reduce the effects of sleep inertia (feelings of awkwardness for several hours after waking up).

Some products, such as Ario (currently produced via Kickstarter), offer this feature automatically. With this, you can program similar functions in most smart lighting systems!

3. Smart lighting and security

The risk of falling is a problem that we associate primarily with the elderly. However, the increased risk of falling can affect people of all ages — especially at night. Darkness and unsteadiness increase your chances of bumping into furniture, tripping over carpet, or falling over.

At best, you’re left with an annoying bruise. In the worst case scenario, falling down stairs can cause serious health problems.

ilumi Mobile App Sleep Smart

Solution for smart lighting — smart lighting can save you and your family members from these accidents. If every member of your family has access to certain lighting controls throughout the house, you can easily turn on a dim red light.

These lights can then give you a safe path for your midnight trips to the bathroom (or fridge, I don’t judge) without any stimulating bright blue light.

4. Smart lighting and emotions

Would you believe that lighting actually has a significant effect on our emotions? Media coverage has provided a lot of information about the use of specialized blue lights to counter seasonal affective disorder. (GARDEN). However, the lighting around us can also have a more subtle effect on our emotional well-being.

Research in journal of consumer psychology show that the intensity of light in a room can influence the intensity of the emotions of people in that space.

These trends were present for both positive and negative emotions and responses to a range of tests, such as attractiveness, spiciness, or feelings towards positive/negative words.

Smart Lighting Solution. Bright lights have their place, but having a dimming option for smart lights is also a good idea. Dimming the lights can help balance difficult or emotional conversations, decision making, and perceptions.

5. Smart lighting and eye health

One of the most obvious health effects of lighting is the strain it can cause before our eyes. This is especially true in an office setting, as bright overhead light can prevent you from focusing well on documents or a computer screen. According to the Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety, improper lighting can cause eye strain, headaches, blurred vision, or dry eyes.

Most office (or home) jobs now require a variety of visual challenges. You can work with documents, computer screens and other people in one tiny space. All of these tasks have very different lighting needs that cannot be met by a single fixture.

Smart Lighting Solution One of the best ways to reduce eye strain with lighting is to have several different smart lights in your workspace. The ability to control multiple light sources allows you to tailor your lighting needs to the task at hand.

For example, experts recommend using a table lamp for work lighting with subdued overhead lighting when working with documents. However, when you’re meeting with a colleague, you’ll probably want your desk light to be dim and your overhead light to be brighter and more cheerful. There are also some science-based recommendations for preventing computer-related eye strain. eye strain associated with .

Being able to change all of these settings while sitting at your desk ensures that the settings best suited to your eyes win out. You don’t have to physically get up to turn the lights on or off, or move them around the room—your automated system can do it for you.

What’s next for smart lighting

What’s really interesting about smart lighting is that it’s really in its infancy. There is more research than ever looking at the effects of light on our body, mood and psychological well-being than ever before.

Now all we have to do is wait for the technology to catch up.