Perceived well-being and light-reactive hormones: An exploratory study

Abstract

Light can impact psychobiological processes in a healthy or harmful way, challenging designers to better understand the resources they are manipulating. The present exploratory study compared two forms of office lighting which differed in correlated colour temperatures and light level. A holistic approach, comprising visual, emotional and biological dimensions, was used to assess the lighting conditions that could favour productivity and well-being by means of the identification of congruent relationships between objective and subjective measurements in response to light stimuli. The former included analyses of melatonin and cortisol, and the latter were psychological instruments for measuring transitory mood, somnolence, and visual comfort. Controlled experiments were run in a laboratory with a repeated measures design, which yielded fifty-six evaluations. Although no extreme ranges of correlated colour temperatures were used in this study, the spectral blue component present in the correlated colour temperature of approximately 4000 K, and also provided by the light-emitting diodes system at a higher light level, could have contributed to render most of the strong effects on the inter and intra correlations among the psychobiological responses. The mediator role of the psychological profile of the individuals was demonstrated by the significant predictive value of the perceived stress measures.

Test rooms to study human comfort in buildings: A review of controlled experiments and facilities

“…The traditional configuration was a side-lit single office, generally bigger than 20 m 3 . Still, some investigations used a corner office [193], a mock-up of an open-plan office with multiple workplaces [209], a re-configured classroom [66], a full-scale mock-up conference room [208], or divided an existing office room with internal vertical partitions, resulting in smaller experimental spaces [217,218]. Some glare experiments used full-size apparatuses consisting of a semi hexagonal lighting chamber equipped with a chin rest [22,172,173,176] or of a semi-spherical screen with two halogen lamps mounted on a 1-m radius round boom [21,185].…”

“…The presence of a window to the outdoors was linked to the type of experiment investigated. Almost all experimental spaces provided with a window investigated daylight, except for those studies that performed the experiments at night [222] or in which windows were shaded with a black-out fabric or blocked [164,180,199,207,217]. The studies investigating a mix of daylight and electric light were provided with shading devices [189,190,205,220,223].…”

Evaluación de carga mental en tareas de cálculo mental bajo distintas temperaturas de iluminación

“…Existe una gran variedad de estudios de iluminación y el efecto dominó en el ciclo biológico, entre ellos el que demostró cómo influencia la iluminación en calidad de carga mental, analizando el diámetro de la pupila y exponiendo a los participantes a diferentes niveles de iluminación [5] . Sin embargo, aún no se ha llegado al zenit de la identificación óptima de iluminación para el confort visual y la percepción del espacio [6] .…”

Current Use of Lighting Simulation Tools in Sweden

“…Good lighting quality is one of the essential values that buildings provide. The effect of daylight on saving energy, occupant well-being, and productivity is demonstrated in various studies (Veitch and Newsham ,1997;Bodart and De Herde, 2002;Krarti et al, 2005;Aries and Newsham, 2008;Borisuit et al, 2015;Yu and Su, 2015;Arif et al, 2016;Tonello et al, 2019). In addition, the right balance between daylighting and artificial lighting is necessary for providing good lighting (Boyce 2014).…”