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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

#51

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

Gigachad wrote: post #29
sdrothrock wrote: post #22

Japanese ceiling lights have standard functionalities for adjusting not only brightness, but also yellow-blue levels. Are simpler (e.g. not full RGB) LED lights like this not as common/affordable in other places? I just realized that I really take them for granted.

I have seen downlights which have a switch to toggle between warm and cool but the switch is not accessible after installation. I imagine the hardest part is just the controls. You’d have to run some data line along with the electrical and then have a special switch which contains the controls. Unless you are willing to go with a wireless remote in which case just get the ikea bulbs for cheap.

Philips Scene Switch (formerly Choose Scene) cycle between warm and cool each power cycle.

I found the cool white too full resulting in a dull clinical grey look and ended up replacing them all with dimmable 150mm warm LED downlights.

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

#52

Post by rr808 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #42
pineconewarrior wrote: post #10

Absolutely, absolutely agree. Out of all of the things I own, the little monitor-top lightbar I have is at the top of my list for cost-to-life-benefit ratio. If I forget to turn it on I always why I feel so gloomy. Seriously get one, even if your lighting is otherwise nice.

I don't understand what this accomplishes? Monitors produce their own light, with the brightness being adjustable. Including local dimming zones or per-pixel zones in OLEDs. The only benefit I can see is if you cannot touch type and need to see your hands, but isn't key lighting the normal solution to that problem? PS - I used to work with someone that needed the overhead light on to see their LCD monitor better. I'm…

If you use dark mode everywhere you dont get that light. :)

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

#53

Post by sodality2 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #42
pineconewarrior wrote: post #10

Absolutely, absolutely agree. Out of all of the things I own, the little monitor-top lightbar I have is at the top of my list for cost-to-life-benefit ratio. If I forget to turn it on I always why I feel so gloomy. Seriously get one, even if your lighting is otherwise nice.

I don't understand what this accomplishes? Monitors produce their own light, with the brightness being adjustable. Including local dimming zones or per-pixel zones in OLEDs. The only benefit I can see is if you cannot touch type and need to see your hands, but isn't key lighting the normal solution to that problem? PS - I used to work with someone that needed the overhead light on to see their LCD monitor better. I'm…

I'm guessing it's more about ambient light sources besides the screen; it always makes me feel a lot more awake if I'm in a brighter room.

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

#54

Post by ninjin »

sdrothrock wrote: post #22

Japanese ceiling lights have standard functionalities for adjusting not only brightness, but also yellow-blue levels. Are simpler (e.g. not full RGB) LED lights like this not as common/affordable in other places? I just realized that I really take them for granted.

Agreed on all points, Japanese ceiling lights are wonderful. For context, the great majority of Japanese homes and apartments come with standardised, non-screw, ceiling light fixtures for which you purchase your own lights when you move in.

In fact, I had never even seen a building without these fixtures until I moved into my current apartment (built by Sekisui House in 2019) that for some reason has these horrible in-ceiling, spotlight-esque lights that are common at least in Europe. Whilet they have a somewhat yellow tint, they can not be dimmed. My solution was to grab a standard desk lamp and LED bulbs that came with a simple IR remote, so as not to torture my poor eyes at night.

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

#55

Post by shagie »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #37
abletonlive wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced about blackout curtains being healthy. Why is it that when you go camping you feel so refreshed and good when the sun comes up and wakes you up? Did our far ancestors use blackout curtains? How did they deal with the sun waking them up everyday? My guess is that it's the optimal way to wake up actually.

Our ancestors used to go to bed earlier and wake up in the middle of the night for a while before going back to sleep. Our schedules and concept of 'normal' (versus 'natural') has changed drastically.

For more info on the two sleeps:

The forgotten medieval habit of 'two sleeps' -- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieva... and the HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29886907

And Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_sleep

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

#56

Post by hackernewds »

twicetwice wrote: post #44
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 won't link them because I don't want to get flagged for spam, but I really like the bulbs from cloudfree[dot]shop. They come pre-flashed with Tasmota and take <5 minutes to set up, then they can be controlled directly over wifi, or can easily be connected with HomeAssistant, etc. (Tasmota is open source local-only firmware, so there's no cloud or anything to worry about.) My only complaint is that they're not super…

Is this a self promotion?

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

#57

Post by hinoki »

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.

IKEA Trådfri has an open api as well: https://github.com/home-assistant-libs/pytradfri

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

#58

Post by foxes »

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.

Don’t you have windows?

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

#59

Post by benreesman »

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 it’ll help a little.”

So I splurged on the 6k display. I can literally feel it in my temples after a long session.

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

#60

Post by llamataboot »

I agree with this 100%. When we bought our house 5 years ago I bought some hue bulbs as a luxury purchase along with one Sonos speaker. Figured I was spending 200 grand on a house so may as well pay a few hundred dollars worth of toys.

Fast forward 5 years and the whole house is automated (and not through the cloud) but the ability to change moods with lights (and lights with moods) and especially have non-white light throughout the house has been amazing.

I can't even remember the last time light was truly bright white except for occasionally in the morning when needing to wake up or when needing to really read and concentrate. Other than that it seems vaguely inhuman to go into a house and be lit up in cold white lights like an interrogation

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