Are you in the dark when it comes to lighting?

Welcome back for my second blog post (who would have thought I would remember to keep working on my blogs...)

The topic of this blog post is near and dear to my heart, as I am a huge fan of good lighting.  As many of you know, lighting affects how we feel.  Those of us who live in Minnesota (or other northerly states) may start feeling a little bleh in the winter months, and then start to come out of our shells in the summer months, and most of that is due to the amount of sunlight we are interacting with each day, and the color of that light.  Yes, I know that some of you may call yourself Minnesotans but get depressed because you hate the cold, but that is different... you just aren't a true Minnesotan unless you can embrace the cold, the snow, and the ice... I digress.  back to lighting... you all know those beautiful sunrises and sunsets... where the sky is lit up with deeper yellow, orange, or even red... this is due to the sunlight being refracted through the atmosphere and the blue light being split off and not making it to our eyes... Many years of evolution has caused our bodies to learn to manage our wake and sleep times based on the lighting we experience. This means that as we are being exposed to light that has a lot of blue light in it, we are naturally more energetic, and awake, and when the blue light begins to disappear around us, we naturally get more calm and tired.  Those of us that are nerds call this the circadian rhythm.  Now that we know how our body reacts to different colors of light, we might realize that we don't go to sleep easily because we replaced all of our light bulbs in our house with "Bright White" bulbs, or we may not get very energetic during the day because our offices are too dark and lit with a warmer, more yellowish colored light.  What happens if we are able to fix some of these problems by tailoring the light in our home and work environments to how nature has taught our bodies to react to light.  Do you want to wake up earlier and feel more energized faster? maybe your lights in your walk-in closet, bathroom, and where you eat breakfast should be brighter and slightly more blue in color, tricking your body into starting the day energized? how about trying to fall asleep easier at night? what if your bedroom lamps, your living room lamps, and other lights that are often on in the evening are a more warm color? your body would start the process of calming you down and getting ready for sleep.  It is also a good idea to avoid blue light (have your TV set to a warmer color tempeature, and turn your blue light filter on on your phones/tablets).  If this all seems to complicated, that is understandable, who has time to think all of this out and have different color bulbs in different areas.  Did you know there are actually smart bulbs out there that can change color temperature throughout the day? There are smart home control systems that allow you to adjust the color of all the light in your home to match the natural circadian light cycle based on your home's latitude and longitude!!!  That is crazy, isn't it? Most of us will never have systems like this in our homes, and most of us prefer that all of the lights in their home are the same color temperature, so my recommendation to most people is to pick a color temperature that makes their home feel right to them, often a midpoint between that soft natural yellow light and the bright bluish white.  I personally prefer a color temperature between 2700K  3300K, this is a color temperature that looks good, and doesn't push our bodies into a high energy, or low energy state, it is fairly neutral.  One other thing I look for when updating the lighting in a space is brightness.  Many homes are designed with not enought light, especially in the absense of natural light.  I like to take a very utilitarian approach to the brightness  I look for in my home and my clients' homes.  I want the lights in any room to be bright enough that the space feels spacious, you don't have any dark shadowed corners of the rooms.  Those darkened corners are what makes a large room feel small, and a small room feel tiny.  Once you have enough light in the room to make it feel as big and open as it possibly can, we can add dimmers.  this allows you to reduce the level of light produced by the bulbs. allowing you to tailor the feeling in the room to your need.  Lower the level of the lights to make the space feel smaller and more cozy when watching a movie, snuggling with your kids, eating dinner, etc.  You can also change the entire feel of a room by using lamps.  Maybe you have a really comfortable chair in the corner of your room that you love to read in.  You could keep the lights in the room dim, but have a brighter reading lamp to light up your space, giving you a space with very little distraction, allowing you to get fully immersed in your book.  One of my favorite trends recently is adding backlighting to your TV.  This allows you to reduce the perceived brightness of your TV, reduce eye fatigue, and makes your TV and movie watching experience a little more immersive.  WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT LIGHT CAN HAVE SUCH AN IMPACT ON OUR DAILY LIFE!!!   Now let me tell you a little secret I have learned!  As you may know, I am a realtor, an engineer, and overall just a nerd, so when it comes to making sure my client's homes have the greatest impact on their potential buyers, I USE LIGHT!!!!  I often recommend to my clients to replace most if not all of their bulbs in their homes with brighter bulbs with color temperature adjustability.  We go through the home, replace all of the old bulbs with 100W equivalent LED bulbs, and we adjust the color temperature of the bulbs to make the greatest impact depending on the colors of the walls/furniture, etc.  Brightly lit closets, bathrooms, kitchens, etc. make potential buyers feel like the spaces are large and usable.  People often have an easier time imagining themselves in a space with their own furniture when a space is well lit.  A bonus to replacing all of the bulbs in a home at the same time is they will all match and we give all of the fixtures a quick cleaning/dusting.  WHAT A DIFFERENCE THIS MAKES!!!! Best of all, my photographers are able to get better photos of each space with the most possible detail, so our final photos and 3d tours REALLY POP!!!  If you aren't looking to sell your home anytime soon, I would highly recommend investing some time and money (it is fairly inexpensive) into making some of these changes so you can really enjoy the benefits of these upgraded while you are in your home, not just for the month before we sell it!!