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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

#81

Post by rootusrootus »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #69
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.

> Why is it that when you go camping you feel so refreshed and good when the sun comes up and wakes you up? Because alcohol induces REM sleep?

The worst sleep I ever get is when I drink alcohol too close to bedtime.

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

#82

Post by mleonhard »

photochemsyn wrote: post #17

Some of the best lighting around are the specialized fluorescent tubes used to promote coral growth in tropical aquariums. It's very close to full-spectrum sunlight and can be simply set up over a desk. Also great for small plants.

Be careful of UV exposure from aquarium coral lamps.

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

#83

Post by larrywright »

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…

This directs light down on the desk, so the light is perpendicular to the light coming from the monitor. It's not illuminating the monitor at all really. It's basically a desk lamp that doesn't take up any space on the desk. And in my case, it's powered by one of the USB ports that the monitor (43" TV) already had.

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

#85

Post by smcleod »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #84
smcleod wrote: post #18

I'm surprised the author doesn't mention the importance of having high CRI lighting.

And not only CRI, but the absence of flicker ... which is surprisingly common even in LED bulbs.

Yeah good point, I've noticed in some cheap office LED rollouts.

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

#86

Post by smcleod »

haneul wrote: post #76
smcleod wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, fantastic lights and worth every penny, their CRI is high enough to fill out the visible light spectrum nicely - you don't get any "indoor greys" and they seem to last forever, several of my bulbs are over 10 years old and still working perfectly.

I had a contrary response to the Hue. The color rendition felt dead compared to my typical lighting from Waveform.

Did you have the >90 or >80 CRI bulbs?

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

#87

Post by gernb »

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.

Do they require an app, registering an account, being online to use them?

I don't want lights someone else controls and not going to pay for lights that report to someone else when they are on/off.

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

#88

Post by tomjakubowski »

gernb wrote: post #87
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.

Do they require an app, registering an account, being online to use them? I don't want lights someone else controls and not going to pay for lights that report to someone else when they are on/off.

No internet connection required to use the bulbs. The bulbs connect to a hub over Zigbee, the hub connects to your LAN. Making that connection requires the Hue app, as far as I know.

Once the bulbs are set up with the hub, you can control it on your network using HomeKit or open source equivalents, and don't need the Hue app for anything but firmware updates.

This article convinced me taking the plunge would be reasonably safe, and I've been pleased with it. https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/51910.html?thread=1921222

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

#89

Post by spangry »

photochemsyn wrote: post #17

Some of the best lighting around are the specialized fluorescent tubes used to promote coral growth in tropical aquariums. It's very close to full-spectrum sunlight and can be simply set up over a desk. Also great for small plants.

Any bulb / hardware recommendations? Also what do you think of mixing UV in there in some limited quantity?

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

#90

Post by hatware »

bubblethink wrote: post #25
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.

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.

Home Assistant, but you'll spend more than a weekend getting things settled. Still, I love how open and free the platform is for most of its users. It really is an incredible example of open source software.
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