It has long been known that waking up to a beautiful sunrise is a great way to start your day. It brings a sense of uplifting joy and a feeling of energy. Whilst going to bed is best done in a warmer calmer light, that relaxes you and prepares you for going to sleep.

Understanding Your Body’s Natural Clock

Your body runs on a 24-hour clock effected by sunrise and sunset called your circadian rhythm. But in an age where we open our eyes and look directly at our screens, then go to work to look at more screens, and finally go to bed still looking at screens, our circadian rhythms are being altered, and this is having a profound effect on our wellbeing.

Now if you are unaware of what your circadian rhythm is, then think of it as your body clock. Upon waking your body begins to rise from that night’s sleep, you start to build into the pace of your day, where your energy levels peak, and then begin to dissipate ready for the evening where you wind down and prepare yourselves for the next night’s sleep allowing you to repair and re-energise.

The Role of Artificial Light in Disrupting Natural Patterns

This entire process is directly encouraged by outside light, and with us now spending more time indoors, and under artificial light, it is essential to consider how we can harness the technology available to us to control that artificial light and begin improving our lives and wellbeing. There is a fantastic ongoing project we think is worth looking at called Protege Noctem by Mattia Balsamini and the PhMuseum that looks into Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) and its impact on our environment and wellbeing. From our daily lives being affected, all the way to how nature around us is being impacted by artificial light.

Harnessing Human-Centric Lighting for Health and Wellbeing

Human Centric Lighting (HCL) is a method of combining tuneable LED systems for indoor lighting, and additionally where possible, external lighting, to replicate your sleep-wake cycle, and the dawn-dusk pattern found naturally outdoors.

From a technology standpoint, designing a lighting control system that uses protocols such as Dali for tuneable white LED, or DMX for full colour wheel access, and then replicating the dawn-dusk cycle via a schedule built into your control system such as Crestron Lutron or KNX will have profound and long-term benefits on your mood, concentration, creativity and energy levels.

Designing Seamless Lighting Solutions for Marine and Residential Spaces

Both in a marine and a residential environment you can harness this technology within your design, without impacting on the look and feel of the space. Tuneable LED lamps, that remove the blue light and reduce flickering such as those found in Ray Lighting products greatly increase the effect of the system’s ability to control the natural lighting patterns that keep our circadian rhythm in its natural state. Manufacturers such as Savage Lighting can even upgrade your existing fittings to state-of-the-art LED with custom engines and no change to the interior finish, meaning older vessels (and soon, residential properties) that are still running on halogen can benefit further from simply upgrading to not just save energy, but also take full advantage of the technology.

With all the above information, how does this couple together to make for a well-designed, autonomous system that harnesses technology to benefit our circadian rhythm? Well, using schedules built into your control systems, and tuning the LED colour for the correct time of day, will see brighter and bluer lights in the morning upon waking, and increasing that to akin natural daylight (if you are unable to make it outdoors for natural light), to then removing the blue, softening the brightness, and increasing the yellow, for a calmer more natural evening light.

Outside of technology there are companies out there that also promote taking control of your circadian rhythm and improving your sleep wake cycle, by introducing natural supplements into your day. For more information on this we highly recommend you look at the range of products by HMN24 and listen to what Phil Learney has to say on the benefits. 

We now hope that understanding the benefits of utilising technology in artificial lighting, to maintain a healthy circadian rhythm, will allow you to discuss this with your clients on future projects, bringing to them not only a greater return on their investment, but a profound improvement on their lives.

Reach out to us at MP Technology for more insight into Human Centric lighting, or to discuss your next project.