My lighting column in the March issue of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR covers a new University of Illinois study that attempted to link daylight exposure to quality and duration of sleep among office workers:

“Recently, a multidisciplinary team at the University of Illinois, Urbana-­Champaign, set out to determine the effect of daylight on the quality and duration of sleep, as well as the resulting quality of life, of office workers. The results suggest workers in windowed spaces tend to sleep better and longer than those without windows, while showing a greater tendency toward physical activity, possibly due to greater vitality.
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Check it out here.

Research by an interdisciplinary team at the University of Illinois found that office workers in windowed spaces scored better on common self-report health and sleep surveys, averaging 46 minutes of sleep per night (measured by sleep monitor) compared to workers without windows.

More evidence that appropriately designed lighting may be preventive medicine? Maybe so, though it begs the question of how well they isolated light as a factor as opposed to human factors such as income, job security, etc.

The study concludes: “We suggest that architectural design of office environments should place more emphasis on sufficient daylight exposure of the workers in order to promote office workers’ health and well-being.”

Click here to read the report.