What to Know About the Latest Trend in Home Lighting Control

You may have heard about smart lighting and lighting control systems. You might think it is a non-essential luxury. Perhaps it’s not a must-have feature, but when you look at the benefits of smart lighting, they make absolute sense. Think about it this way – your home has a dishwasher, right? It is not an absolute necessity, but you might be hard-pressed to think about giving it up and washing all your dishes manually.

Lighting control has incredible benefits in convenience, efficiency, and aesthetics. But with advances in the latest types of LED lighting, there’s another unexpected one – wellness. A new trend in home design and technology is Biophilic design. Biophilia, according to Webster’s dictionary, means “a hypothetical human tendency to interact or be closely associated with other forms of life and nature.” Applied to light, it means employing new technology to make artificial light more natural, allowing us to bring a little more of nature indoors.

You might ask at this point: Don't we get plenty of natural sunlight in Bountiful and all over Utah? Perhaps, but in our modern lives, we spend a considerable part of our lives indoors. And with LED tunable lighting technology, we can make the indoors feel a bit more natural.

Jump Start Your day

So, what is tunable lighting? First, let's understand a bit of science about how light influences us. Lighting hue and intensity affect our circadian rhythms. We tend to not feel as alert on a cloudy, dreary day. But a bright sunny day gives us energy. At night, we sleep in the dark, and fading light starts us on the path to unwind and rest.

Moreover, it's not just the amount of light that affects our natural rhythms; it's the hue. Bright, bluer hues – like that of the midday sun – makes us more alert. Warmer, yellow, and redder tones, like that of the setting sun, tend to relax us.

Tunable lighting lets you control lighting temperature to better match natural rhythms. Imagine waking up to gradually increasing light that mimics natural sunlight in the morning. Your kitchen lights can be perfectly adjusted to complement sunlight coming in through windows. What if it’s cloudy outside? Your lighting can still lift the mood inside.

Sleep Better at Night

If you happen to use the "night mode" feature on current smartphones, you are already using an implementation of tunable lighting. We all use smartphones and tablets throughout the day, but the blue light from the LED backlighting on the screens tend to keep us more alert.

Night mode capability lowers the screen intensity and uses warmer backlighting to ease eye strain and help our brains intuitively relax. With tunable lighting, you can apply this concept throughout your home in the evening, gently relaxing you toward a night of restful sleep.

One of the significant advantages of LED lighting is its precise dimming capability. Coupled with "warm dimming" features, which allows for a very warm color temperature when dimming the light, you can adjust your illumination to your tastes and set placid scenes when it’s time to unwind.

Add Beauty

We intuitively know that lighting can set the mood. A good restaurant uses lighting effectively to set the right ambiance, whether setting the scene for a bright breakfast or a romantic dinner atmosphere. In your home, your lighting can do the same. Brighten up breakfast with light that matches the early sun. Relax in the evening watching a favorite show with warm, dim light to relax. Some LED tunable lighting can also do color, so you can wash a wall or feature of your house in a complementary color. For a party, you could play with color to set a festive mood.

 

SEE MORE: 5 Reasons You Need Home Lighting Automation

 

There has never been a better time to invest in home lighting control with smart features like tunable lighting. To learn more, we encourage you to set up a one-on-one consultation with our team. Just give us a call at (801) 444-3200, fill out our contact form, or chat with us below.