SMART THINKING

HUMAN CENTRED LIGHTING - TRICK OR TREAT?

Dr Shelley James, founder of the Age of Light Innovations Group, PhD from the Royal College of Art, international expert on light and well-being, and recent speaker at EI Live! 2021 explains why human centric lighting is so important.

Sounds like marketing hype? Expensive? Difficult? I hope to convince you by the end of this article that it’s not difficult and it’s not expensive. And getting it right could help you to build lifelong relationships with your clients, help them to save money and cut their carbon footprint too.

How many of you are ‘morning’ people? Do you have teenage children who struggle to get out of bed? Most of the time we have to work on the same ‘time zone’ but science shows that everyone is slightly different - and that changes over time.

Distribution of chronotypes (that’s when you naturally feel awake and when you’d rather be in bed), how much sleep you need and how that changes over time varies a lot. For example, a teenager’s body clock runs around two hours later than an adult: your 7am is 5am for them. And over the age of 70, you might turn into an extreme night owl - or an early bird. One experiment in a London school changed the start time to 10:00am so that the kids could get the eight hours they need. The results were impressive - reduced illness after two years fell by 50% and improved academic performance- reversed once the start time went back to ‘normal’ and a 12% increase in the value-added number of students making good academic progress.

And how many of you are over 40 years of age? You won’t have noticed because those changes happen slowly over time. But your eyes are slowly becoming cloudy and yellowing with age. By the time you’re 40, you need twice as much light as a 10-year-old to get the same effect.

A recent study by the CIE (The Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage) suggests that women prefer warmer light and will still polish off a large breakfast even though it’s in a room with only blue light, because we have a better sense of smell, so we can override the slightly odd look of the food on offer. The point is that you are all human - there is an ‘average’ - like the sound level from a loudspeaker or the amount of treble you want in the mix, but everyone is different and that’s where the ‘human-centred’ bit comes in.

So, what we call ‘circadian’ (circa = around, dian = day) simply means lighting that helps the body to know what time it is. That matters because every single cell in your body and brain works together like a super-efficient just in time delivery system. Your heart gets ready to pump up the pressure as you rise from your bed, your gut gets the chemicals ready to break down your breakfast and your brain draws power to process the inbox.

That clock is such a powerful driver that when it gets out of whack, things start to go badly wrong. Lost sleep for one night is the equivalent of driving with a shot of whiskey in your blood. And over time, it’s, quite literally, lethal. The World Health Organisation has classified disruption to the circadian system as a probable carcinogen. And if you can remember what it feels like to be jet-lagged, you will probably have a glimpse of what that means: foggy brain, weight gain, low mood. Children who have disrupted body clocks are more likely to be obese, get lower scores at school and have an increased risk of suicide. So, your body clock is highly personal, very important and it uses light to tell the time.

The eyes are part of a sophisticated system that uses light to tell the body exactly what time it is

It needs a strong signal - bright, cool light in the morning so that it can switch off at night. And as we get older that signalling system slows down and needs more help than ever. The trouble is that the lights in our homes and offices are just not bright enough to give it that wake-up signal (300 lux in an average office compared to 10,000 lux on a cloudy day), and are too bright in the evening to allow it to switch off (40 lux from an iPad to 1 lux on a moonlit night). So where does human-centred light come in? It’s an umbrella term for an approach to lighting that is designed with the human in mind - chronotype, age, gender and activity.

TUNABLE LIGHTING

‘Tunable’ is one dimension of that critical ‘day-night’ shift (from cool to warm) - you are increasing or reducing the amount of that ‘wake up’ wavelength in the lighting. You can do that with two light sources - bright cool blue above and warm dim low-level lamps - or use a control to change the light in the same source. It also turns out that you will perform better in a wordpairing test and be more accurate under bright cool light and give people the benefit of the doubt if you see them in a warm light.

FULL SPECTRUM LIGHTING

What the marketing people call ‘full spectrum’ is another dimension of that ‘tunable’ idea. ‘Full spectrum’ lights mimic the wavelengths of light you find in the sun. Like with sound, rubbish in, rubbish out. This is the difference in the appearance of an apple in ‘full spectrum’ vs. the same ‘colour temperature’ with a different colour rendering index.

The benefits of full spectrum go beyond your ability to appreciate one of your five a day. It turns out that lights that deliver more wavelengths, create higher visual comfort and improves your ability to sleep. They may also help with the onset of myopia although the research is still underway. Truly human-centred lighting is simply lighting designed for humans: their age, their gender and what they are doing; Bright, cool light is a powerful wake-up call; Gentle, warm light is the cue to relax and connect and finally darkness, like silence, is golden.

THE ROLE OF CONTROLS

To go back to the sound system analogy, how many of you have clients who love all those buttons - and others who just want it to work? And how many of you have been called in to sort out a system that simply wasn’t fit for purpose and gave the whole sector a bad name? Well, it’s the same with lighting.

A human-centred lighting system will deliver light when and where you need it, using highquality components designed to last. The new EU Circular Design Regulations mean that lighting products in the future will need to be designed to be modular so that sensors and other components can be upgraded separately.

The next generation of lights are designed with wireless sensors that will allow you to cut the time and cost of installation and programming upgrades and integrate artificial lighting with daylight and security systems. You can cut electricity bills, reduce landfill - and deliver the dynamic and life-affirming qualities of the day-night cycle that will have your clients singing your praises and coming back for more. It’s not expensive, it’s not complicated and you could make the world of difference to your clients, your business and the planet!

Genuinely human centric lighting is not as hard to create as you might think Age of Light AgeofLightInnovations.com

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