Home Sweet Circadian Home🏡
🪶 What might an informed interior designer say about making your home more circadian-effective?
Hi,
I hope your day is off to a great start! Last weekend, Energies published a literature review about designing buildings for circadian rhythmicity. This info is meant help architects design for better visual and non-visual light cues. It's amazing and forward-thinking, and will likely be regulated in the future.
Circadian-effective Interior Design
But for the rest of us here and now, what can we glean from these insights? Here are some tips for existing homes and buildings:
Remove exterior elements that block sunlight from the windows.
Move furniture and workstations closer to windows. Face things so eyes naturally point towards (or perpendicular to) windows.
Cover walls with neutral tones and reflective paint to increase indirect light.
Install overhead lights (choose bright ones, like the sun!).
Choose light-colored shading devices that don't block the sky (such as horizontal blinds).
Use night-specific lights with red/amber tones and low lux. They recommend <10 lux for the 3 pre-bedtime hours and <1 lx for sleep (think candlelight tones🕯).
Use blackout curtains as needed to block outdoor artificial light from coming in during the dark period. Night-shift folks may need these in their bedrooms for catching zzz’s during the day, too.
In planning, account for the full 24-hour cycle. This is vital in homes where there may be a mix of day-active🕊 and night-active people🦉. One common example of this would be a home with an infant that needs nighttime feedings.
Circadian-effective Nightlights
Red nightlights, as recommended above, can increase alertness without suppressing melatonin. If night-active people can adjust to using red lights, they may avoid some of the consequences associated with nighttime wakefulness. And they won't disturb the rhythms of the sleepers around them😴.
Read the full review here: Role of Architectural Design in Creating Circadian-Effective Interior Settings (2021).
That's all for today, but you can always review past posts at nikkofujita.substack.com/archive. I will send more info about human-centric-lighting in my upcoming emails📩.
Best,
Nikko