COMMENT: The benefits of natural light to our overall health are widely researched and well documented. Access to daylight is a vital element of quality and amenity, linking housing to health, and the government’s housing health rating system warns that inadequate natural light poses a threat to physical and mental wellbeing.
Daylight prompts our bodies to produce vitamin D, improves our circadian rhythms and sleep patterns, helps us to focus, enhances productivity – the list goes on. A lack of natural light can have a serious impact on our mental health, from depression and anxiety to Seasonal Affective Disorder.
With most of us spending a third of our lives at work, it is important to ensure the spaces we’re working in – be that at home or in the office – are equipped with all the light we need. Indeed, it is of vital importance for workers’ wellbeing. So, how can we look to achieve that in existing spaces and future ones?
Windows of opportunity
In terms of layout, an obvious answer for maximising light in existing spaces is to set desks close to windows. Facing the light is best in your home-working environment to ensure you are well lit on video calls, too. Another option in offices, particularly those of higher density or with fewer windows, is creating break-out zones in light-rich spaces for the whole office to enjoy.
For spaces that aren’t blessed with much natural light, there are other things that can be done to supplement it.
While it by no means lives up to the real thing, the art of choosing the right artificial light is essential for the window-deprived. For rooms totally devoid of daylight, full-spectrum lightbulbs – soft and warm, designed to simulate sunlight – will go a long way to brightening things up. In terms of fixtures, recessed downlighting placed across the ceiling will provide an even glow throughout the room, or track lighting will allow you to angle the individual beams exactly where you need illumination. For those with a larger budget, biodynamic/human-centric lighting – which can be configured to mimic the rhythms and tones of natural daylight – is the closest one can get to the real thing.
Secondly, the oldest trick in the book for bouncing light around a room and enlarging spaces: mirrors. If you have a natural light source in your home-working space, position a sizeable mirror on the wall directly opposite the window to capture the best angle. Mirrors with thin frames that match the wall colour (or, better still, no frame at all) will create a more seamless feel by making the reflected light feel part of the wider room, not just captured in the mirror itself as if it were merely a picture.
Other light-enhancing features that can be incorporated into workspace interiors include glossy or glass surfaces and light-coloured walls and furnishings.
Illuminating plans
All these tactics can be deployed to enhance our existing workspaces, but maximising natural light should ultimately begin before the first brick is laid.
In the pursuit of healthier buildings, developers should consider natural light in the design phase to ensure their assets are not only equipped to provide enough light for future occupants, but also to ensure the development won’t infringe on the natural daylight and sunlight of neighbouring buildings, not to mention their private legal rights.
Specialist daylight and rights of light surveyors can help in this pursuit by defining a development ‘envelope’ for the proposed design to sit within, creating a massing guideline which will not impair neighbours’ natural light and will also meet planning criteria. Alongside that, the BRE’s Site layout planning for daylight and sunlight: a guide to good practice (BR209) provides invaluable insight into planning developments for good access to daylight and sunlight, to ensure the wellbeing of future occupants and neighbours is put first. The new BS EN 17037 standard should also be taken into consideration, as this offers new guidance on how to achieve appropriate levels of natural light within buildings.
It is clear that natural light has a huge part to play in creating workspaces that support our mental health during the third of our lives that we spend at a desk. Although there are things we can do to bring the light into our existing home and office workspaces, ‘designing in’ enough natural light from the very outset of development will help to ensure a bright future for real estate that puts people – and their wellbeing – first.
Barney Soanes-Cundle is an associate at Hollis
