Let The Sun Light Up Your House

We’ve known for some time that sunlight helps keep our bones strong through our absorption of vitamin D. Now we hear physicians and psychiatrist explain how light, or the lack of it, influences our physical and mental well-being in a world where the concepts of time and space have been changed: the day has been turned into night and vice versa, and people have been brought close to each other through computer technology without ever having to leave their artificially lit and ventilated rooms.

In this brave new world our bodies, which have evolved under the sun, are feeling the deprivation of it in our artificial environments. We spend short winter days in rooms that don’t provide anything near the natural intensity of sunlight. To aggravate the dilemma, building and urban plans generally have ignored the sun. In addition, our penchant for cross-country and international jet travel sends confusing signals to our bodies. These factors all tend to upset our natural rhythms.

Light is beginning to be used to put things right. Seasonal depressions and sleep disorders are being treated by exposing patients to prescribed amounts of bright light, emanating either from the sun or from specially constructed light boxes that imitate the intensity and color spectrum of the sun. Jet-lagged travelers perk up when they spend several hours in the sun upon arrival or the next morning.

Architects talk of joining the “daylighting movement”, which seeks to bring the sun’s light but not its summer heat into our homes. The bright morning light that enters some well-situated bedrooms may be simulated in less ideally located rooms where new technologies are employed. Lamps can be activated by light switches hooked up to photocells, tiny devices that convert the light that falls on them to electricity. As the intensity of the daylight increases, so the current from the photocell increases, gradually brightening the room, and imitating natural light.