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Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

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Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#181

Post by rashkov »

brnt wrote: post #133
lawkwok wrote: post #7

Phillips Hue lights are something you think is a luxury until you get them. The ability to have light change colour temperature or dim depending on the time is so calming. Whenever I revert back to the non—colour-temperature-adjusted light, I feel like I’m in an operating room. The only thing I would note is that they are dimmer than regular lights. Having dim lights in the middle of the day really makes me sleepy.

So, I'm a low light kinda person anyway. The best light are light turned off. I can't stand the amount of light some (many?) switch on at the earliest sign of evening, and I guard my stash of low power bulbs (finding ones under 3W is hard!) like it's my first born. Apart from the kitchen, my house has no bright white lights anywhere. What would the utility of smart bulbs for someone like me be?

My last apartment had really inconveniently placed light switches. I bought some smart bulbs and found it really nice to control from my phone. For example I could turn on or off all the lights in my home without getting out of bed at night or in the morning. I also had wireless light switches that I could place on any part of the wall or just keep at my bedside.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#182

Post by kqr »

Nevermark wrote: post #162

I have worked at home my whole career. It was life changing when I discovered I could aim several LED shop lights at my ceilings (90,000 lumens total, in a vaulted living room) to create a summer day indoors, even on the dimmest cloudiest winter day. When I remodeled my new home, I put 3 dimmable LED light strips around each ceiling, hidden above molding, so every ceiling is effectively a diffuse but high lumen light…

I love the idea of indoor summer days, but my wife thinks it's cozy when it's dim inside (never mind that I think she'd enjoy winter more if she could get more daylight than what's available far north where we live). The dimmable strips sound like an amazing compromise. Are those available at sufficient wattage?

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#183

Post by crispyambulance »

lynndotpy wrote: post #28
bubblethink wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any friendly alternative to these home automation things ? I would like to try some stuff but I don't want to spend a weekend creating vlans or fighting google play services, alexa etc.

I just want some lights that expose a simple API and are easy to talk to. I want smart lights that will work when the internet is down and doesn't need an app to connect to.

There's another problem with many these smart lights, IMHO.

A lightbulb should be a long-lasting, easily replaceable thing. Putting in all sorts of doodads into the base of lightbulb just strikes me as wasteful and a recipe for a brittle configuration. It's bad enough putting in a power converter, now we're talking about RF transceivers, computers, webservers, and REST API's. All this packed into a tiny very hot space packed in with silicone goop and made, often times, by disinterested bottom-of-the-barrel manufacturers.

It's much better, I think, to have the light bulbs be just that, LIGHTBULBS. Of course, they can be LED's, DC powered and have multiple colors but the control and power source should be in a box away from the lights, somewhere convenient. You can then put all the internet-of-things jazz into THAT BOX and not in each light.

This would ultimately give interior designers a better palette of light sources to work with and give consumers a less annoying churn of bad choices for technology.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#184

Post by paganel »

I'm lucky enough to live and to work from a well-lit apartment (mostly by natural light). I was made aware of that when I recently visited the newly purchased apartment of one of my close friends who has the building close to his building only, I don't know, I'd say 10-15 meters away, anyway, close enough that the natural light very rarely gets to his living room. I realised then that I would have been very unhappy to live there (even though, in all other respects, my friend's apartment is "better" compared to mine, as in it is situated in a better location and is bigger and more spacious).

Light and noise (as in, its absence) make a hell of a difference in our well-being.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#185

Post by chrisweekly »

Nevermark wrote: post #162

I have worked at home my whole career. It was life changing when I discovered I could aim several LED shop lights at my ceilings (90,000 lumens total, in a vaulted living room) to create a summer day indoors, even on the dimmest cloudiest winter day. When I remodeled my new home, I put 3 dimmable LED light strips around each ceiling, hidden above molding, so every ceiling is effectively a diffuse but high lumen light…

Please, could you share more details re: specific hardware?

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#186

Post by herodoturtle »

Nevermark wrote: post #162

I have worked at home my whole career. It was life changing when I discovered I could aim several LED shop lights at my ceilings (90,000 lumens total, in a vaulted living room) to create a summer day indoors, even on the dimmest cloudiest winter day. When I remodeled my new home, I put 3 dimmable LED light strips around each ceiling, hidden above molding, so every ceiling is effectively a diffuse but high lumen light…

Would love to see what this looks like if have some photos?

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#188

Post by sj4nz »

goldenkey wrote: post #180
benreesman wrote: post #59

At the risk of sparking some kind of Apple flame war: I went to the optometrist recently and my vision had abruptly tanked, I have a much stronger prescription than a year ago. “Have you been pulling long screen hours?” “Yeah. Very long.” “Well that’s why.” “Outside of cutting screen hours, is there anything else I can do?” “Get the highest DPI display you can afford and crank up the font size. Won’t help much, but i…

As an optometrist with a deep knowledge on this subject, let me first say, the established edifice of eye care and laser eye surgery is an abomination that ruins lives. The advice your optometrist gave you is the information they were indoctrinated with and sadly, it's erroneous. What follows is my best synopsis on what is wrong with the industry, what causes worsening vision, and what you can do to resolve your visi…

SEIKO Vision by their website does not appear to be available in the United States (no providers are listed in their directory)-- do you happen to know anything equivalent available there?

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#189

Post by jmull »

goldenkey wrote: post #180
benreesman wrote: post #59

At the risk of sparking some kind of Apple flame war: I went to the optometrist recently and my vision had abruptly tanked, I have a much stronger prescription than a year ago. “Have you been pulling long screen hours?” “Yeah. Very long.” “Well that’s why.” “Outside of cutting screen hours, is there anything else I can do?” “Get the highest DPI display you can afford and crank up the font size. Won’t help much, but i…

As an optometrist with a deep knowledge on this subject, let me first say, the established edifice of eye care and laser eye surgery is an abomination that ruins lives. The advice your optometrist gave you is the information they were indoctrinated with and sadly, it's erroneous. What follows is my best synopsis on what is wrong with the industry, what causes worsening vision, and what you can do to resolve your visi…

I'm calling bullshit on most of this.

You're making a lot of strong claims that are unsupported or even counterfactual.

E.g.:

> Most cases of myopia (nearsightness), involving progressively worsening vision, are largely due to inaccurate lens prescriptions.

Interesting idea, but what do you have to support this provocative claim?

You argument about minor corrections isn't even logical, which makes me doubt your judgement in any of this.

And it's never a good sign when the citations provided contradict the claims. [1] doesn't support the claims it's attached to. In fact, it says:

"The underlying biological cause of myopia is unknown, and there is no widely accepted means of prevention or cure."

I hope you're not really a practicing optometrist.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#190

Post by lukastr0 »

Nevermark wrote: post #162

I have worked at home my whole career. It was life changing when I discovered I could aim several LED shop lights at my ceilings (90,000 lumens total, in a vaulted living room) to create a summer day indoors, even on the dimmest cloudiest winter day. When I remodeled my new home, I put 3 dimmable LED light strips around each ceiling, hidden above molding, so every ceiling is effectively a diffuse but high lumen light…

I did something similar as participant in this study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.29.21265530v...

The effects, with a 60000 lumen setup, were remarkable. Winter depression, which affected me on 2 out of 7 days before enrolling in the study, dropped to zero for the next two months.

The study showed that this lighting setup works as well as those light therapy boxes you sit in front of, and perhaps even better.

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