From Guest Blogger Matt: Six Tips for Adding Eco-Friendly Lighting to Your Home
The most eco-friendly lighting you can have is natural light. The more daylight you let into your home and your life, the healthier you, your plants, your family and your pets will be. Daylight regulates your natural circadian rhythms, supplies you with vitamin D, and elevates your moods. Natural light is better for your eyes, your hormones and your immune system.
Supplementing daylight with energy-efficient lighting is the most sustainable way for you to keep your home bright and cozy. Eco-friendly lighting keeps both you and the environment healthy. Here are some easy ways to bring more daylight into your life. Try these eco-friendly solutions for natural and energy-efficient home lighting.
1. Add skylights
Dark corners and tight spaces are great places to add a skylight. The extra light brings the space to life and increases the amount of usable square footage in your house. A small bathroom becomes a peaceful retreat that will sustain hanging ferns and other plants that appreciate the steam generated by running hot water in showers, tubs and sinks. Instead of glass, consider a translucent wall. New translucent roofing materials let in light but reduce heat transfer compared to glass.
2. Add or enlarge windows
The kitchen is often the first place people consider adding light. Kitchens are social, highly used and often poorly lit. Having a window over the sink is a good start. Enlarging the window or adding a second one is well worth the investment, both in terms of the resale value of the house and in terms of your own comfort and enjoyment. Fixed windows can be added on stairwells, at the front door and above existing windows. Using thermal glass keeps heat loss or gain to a minimum.
3. Install a sun tunnel
If you can’t easily or affordable add windows or skylights to the kitchen, consider a sun tunnel. The room to be lighted doesn’t have to be directly under the roof. From a dome on the roof, a tube of extremely highly reflective material will bounce daylight down to the other end of the tunnel. The open end of the tunnel is installed in the ceiling and looks like recessed lighting. The sun tunnel brings real daylight into an interior space.
4. Install LED lighting
Compact fluorescent lighting (CFL) bulbs have largely replaced incandescent bulbs on the market. If you haven’t changed all your light bulbs, you should do that now. The energy savings are significant. The newest technology, though, is even more efficient than CFL bulbs. LED lighting systems are now available that use only ten percent of the electricity of old-fashioned incandescent bulbs. The growing trend for LED lighting means that new designs and uses are constantly appearing.
LED lighting can be used indoors, outdoors, as strips, pendants, vanities and in just about any way imaginable.
5. Cut down some evergreens, but keep your deciduous trees
If your house is dark, windows aren’t the only factor to consider. Being surrounded by trees can create a wonderful sense of privacy. It can also make a house gloomy. If you want less shadow, spend some time observing the angle of the sun at different times of day. Keep in mind that the sun will be lower in the sky in the winter and will set in different locations during the year. When you have a clear sense of where you want the sun to come in, evaluate the trees you would have to cut down. Deciduous trees provide welcome shade in the summer and allow warming sunlight to reach the house in winter, when the branches are bare.
6. Go to bed early
Civilization has advanced far past the time when people had to go to bed with the sun. Our sleep habits have gone perhaps too far in the other direction. Electric lights, computer screens, and twenty-four hour access to activity have made many of us sleep-deprived. Putting in long hours at work contributes to sleep loss. It’s hard on the body to work the night shift. Our circadian rhythms tell us when to get up, when to rest and when to be energetic. The sustained stimulation of artificial lighting takes its toll over time.
Adding daylight to your day helps you revive your natural rhythms. Getting outside during the day is important. Being by a window at work helps. Walking or bicycling to work increases your exposure to sunlight; gives you good exercise; and saves the fuel that driving would have cost. Taking a walk when you get home, before the sun goes down, is a good summertime habit.
Sustainability involves preserving the environment. Consider yourself a prime beneficiary of this eco-friendliness. Get healthier and happier with more sunlight in your life. Save energy, the environment and your own peace of mind.
