Our health and well-being are connected to light

Light has been with us since the dawn of time and we have adapted to natural lighting throughout our evolution. However, that is not the case with electric lighting. Here man is the constant and lighting technology is the variable. For the last 150 years, man has made lighting for visual tasks, but since 2002 the game has changed with the discovery of a new receptor in our retina.

The receptor affects different hormones in the brain such as the secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin, which is produced at lower light levels. Conversely, at higher light levels, the stress hormone cortisol is produced making us alert.

An important aspect of sustainability is light for people’s well-being. Human centric lighting is a holistic way of looking at how light affects us. And it affects all aspects of our well-being; from our biological clock and physiological functions to mood, productivity and visual perception.

Fagerhult’s vision is to create the “right light in the right place”, by always having a focus on visual comfort and creating glare-free quality lighting. All our solutions are created with the purpose of contributing to a better environment, helping everyday activities. This philosophy dates back more than 73 years to the founder’s vision of making a floor lamp so his mother could crochet when she wanted.

Lighting that is adapted to the sun’s intensity and colour during the day supports our circadian rhythm and well-being. The invention of the blue LED, that in turn gave us the possibility to make white LED light, provided the breakthrough point for the latest paradigm shift in the lighting industry. Today, electric lighting can support the rhythm of the natural daylight outdoors. In lighting design we consider the visual, emotional and biological effects of light. When these three aspects are in prefect harmony, then we are truly providing enhancing lighting experiences for people.

Today’s challenge is focused on providing lighting for people rather than just for spaces. Whether it’s outdoor or indoor, in shops, schools, offices or hospitals ­­­– lighting creates the feeling of safety, creativity and efficiency. Using daylight as our emotional reference point, we can now design lighting that powerfully influences our emotions in a retail environment, in the same way that stage lighting does in theatres. Fagerhult’s outdoor lighting solutions not only provide comfortable lighting to allow us to fully see around us, but also embrace the latest energy saving technologies.

We need a certain amount of light every day to enable us to perform to the best of our potential. The optimal mix of either daylight or electric light is highly individual depending on many factors such as age, chronotype, sleeping habits and visual degeneration. Fagerhult believe that someday in the future, we will all have stored our individual, lighting profile in a device that records our actual lighting exposure over time. Given access to that data, Fagerhult will design lighting solutions that ensure we identify any shortfall in our daily requirement of light so that we can get the right amount of light to sustain our health and well-being.