Summary
This thesis explores how Swedish residents interact with home lighting and window systems across day and night, identifying barriers to achieving healthy light-dark cycles in residential settings. Practical implications include the need for multi-layered window treatments, user-centered lighting design, and shared responsibility between residents, housing developers, and lighting manufacturers to support circadian wellbeing.
Key Findings
- Multiple motivations, enablers, and inhibitors were identified behind residents' lighting behaviour and choices in Swedish homes using mixed methods (field studies and full-scale apartment model).
- Physical home environments were found to be insufficiently supportive of residents' need for regular 24-hour light and darkness exposure.
- Window openings require multiple functional layers (shading, daylight distribution, privacy) to adequately serve resident needs.
- Responsibility for healthy home lighting extends beyond residents to housing developers and lighting producers, particularly in Sweden where residents typically self-select and install luminaires.
Categories
Sleep & Circadian Health: Examines residents' 24-hour light and darkness exposure in homes, identifying how physical environments can better support circadian health.
The Science of Light: Investigates lighting behaviour, luminaire choices, and window openings as they relate to light/dark exposure patterns and lighting standards in residential settings.
Author(s)
KM Gerhardsson, WA Rogers
Related Publications
Sleep & Circadian Health
- Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock
- The mammalian circadian timing system: organization and coordination of central and peripheral clocks
- The twoâprocess model of sleep regulation: a reappraisal
- Melanopsin is required for non-image-forming photic responses in blind mice
- Strange vision: ganglion cells as circadian photoreceptors
The Science of Light
- Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock
- Color appearance models
- The mammalian circadian timing system: organization and coordination of central and peripheral clocks
- Diminished pupillary light reflex at high irradiances in melanopsin-knockout mice
- Melanopsin is required for non-image-forming photic responses in blind mice