The last few months have been dark times. We don’t have to tell you how much the world and the people living in it have been affected by the corona virus. To this day, the virus impacts every part of society.
In a matter of weeks, a large part of the world population started to work and study from home. We saw the same thing happen in The Netherlands. Businesses had to adjust to this new process very quickly. After a few weeks, many people (both employees and employers) realized working from home was a very viable option.
Warm versus cool lighting
At Unlumited we had another realization: millions of people were suddenly exposed to different lighting during working hours. In an office building, there’s usually plenty of fluorescent lamps to go around, providing people with cool or at least neutral lighting (around 4000 Kelvin). People tend to go for much warmer lighting in their home. Let’s say between 2100 Kelvin (the equivalent of candle light) and 3000 Kelvin (halogen lamps).
Warmer lighting is great if you’ve had a long day of work and want to relax before going to bed, but it’s not optimal for a productive day of work. The amount of light in people’s homes also tends to be insufficient for the purpose of working.
Human centric lighting
This brings us back to human centric lighting. We’ve talked about it before, but now more than ever people are starting to notice the effect of lighting on their productivity. Especially people who haven’t gone to the office in months and are now starting to go again, even if it’s just for a day.
In short: human centric lighting replicates the natural flow of daylight. This comes with many benefits, like improved concentration and productivity. The amount of light and light temperature directly affects important processes in your body, for example your sleep cycle. If you’re not getting enough light, you may start to experience what is called the winter blues.
Human centric lighting is designed to harness the positive effects lighting can have on the body, while countering the negative effects at the same time. Artificial lighting can achieve this by changing the amount and temperature of light when necessary, to correspond with the needs and preferences of employees.
At Unlumited we fully believe human centric lighting is the future, because it focuses on the human side. Lighting is very personal and people tend to have their own preferences. That’s why our products are always very customizable. Not just our fixtures and contour lighting, but also the control solutions we offer through our Zen-Lite system.
Zen-lite control solutions
With our Zen-Lite control solutions your clients can fully automate their human centric lighting. Or their employees, students, customers, and so on can choose to adjust the lighting to their liking.
Whatever they choose, lighting should never be an afterthought. And too often it is. In our next blog we’ll talk about why that’s a problem, and how we can fix it.
If you want to know more about human centric lighting, we’ll soon have a blog post about a very interesting project we did, where we added human centric lighting to a luxurious home. Follow us on LinkedIn to stay informed about all our latest projects and blog posts.