Have you looked at your electricity bill before and just stared blankly with a headache? If you have, I’m going to tell you that it’s because you don’t use daylighting in your apartment.

Daylighting is the art of letting natural sunlight illuminate your home’s interior. Let’s get to discussing the benefits of daylighting and how you can apply it in your home.

Why use daylighting?

1.   Saves energy costs

It is common knowledge that daylight removes the use and cost of indoor lighting. But there’s also one aspect that we tend to overlook. That is heating, ventilation, and air conditioning costs.

With daylighting, you can allow sunlight to heat the apartment’s interior during winters. During summers, you can open the windows to let light in and the hot air out.

2.   Helps you maintain a healthy sleep schedule

You can snooze your alarm or dismiss it from waking you up. But, you can’t hide from the glow of the sun even if you’re under the sheets. You’ll go warmer and warmer the longer you stay under and you’ll eventually get off the bed.

In addition to having a natural circadian rhythm from using daylighting in your home apartment, a Turkish study showed that people tend to be more productive at work and at school when exposed to interiors lit by the day.

3.   Helps you get Vitamin D

Sunlight has ultraviolet B rays. When these rays hit your skin cells, they hit the cholesterol in your skin and starts the process of synthesizing vitamin D.

To get healthy amounts of vitamin D, expose yourself daily to direct sunlight during midday. But remember, expose yourself for a short period of 10-30 minutes. Exceeding this time limit will be harmful to your health.

4.   Reduces health risks of fluorescent lighting

Regular exposure to fluorescent lighting can cause eye pains, vision blurriness, dizziness, and headaches. You should limit yourself to fluorescent light exposure by using daylighting techniques. You can find some of these techniques below

4 Daylighting techniques you can use

1.   Ditch the drapes, blinds, and shades

Drapes, blinds, and shades are very thick materials. Not only do they block sunlight from coming into your apartment, but they’re also too heavy and thick for air to pass through. As much as possible, don’t install these materials as your window covers. Instead, use white and light curtains to allow cold outdoor wind to pass.

2.   Position your bed where the morning sun rays land

When rearranging your room, look for areas where there is concentrated light during the morning. Move your bed there and make sure the headboard is the first place that gets light up when the sun rises. You’ll have a reliable alarm system this way.

Don’t forget to rearrange your bed’s position according to season. Always aim to get that morning sun on your face.

3.   Install mirrors to reflect and spread the concentrated sun rays

There are places in your apartment where sunlight can never reach. To light these areas up, find spots where sunlight naturally strikes. Put a standing mirror on the sunlit area and shift the mirror’s direction to reflect sunlight on the dark space. What’s important is you redirect that concentrated light into the darker areas of your apartment.

4.   Choose short and light-colored furniture

Light colors reflect sunlight while dark colors absorb them. So if you haven’t bought any furniture yet, consider buying light-colored ones. Choose short furniture to allow light to reflect overhead.

The key here is to minimize shadows in your apartment’s interior. If your walls are white or light-colored, keep it that way. If not, ask or request your landlord for a repaint.

Daylighting techniques help us save a lot of money from electricity bills. They also provide us with a lot of health benefits. So change your drapes into light curtains and remove your blinds. Practice leaving the windows open to let the sun’s radiant glow and cool wind in. We hope you learned from this article!

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