What is Daylighting?
Natural
light is justified as 'clean' light in comparison to conventional
electric lighting. This natural light is free of electrical flicker.
Electrical flicker creates in most florescent lights due to their cycled
AC (Alternating Current) power source. In most LED's, it occurs to preserve power. Full spectrum of visible solar colors exists in natural light which is very essential and significant for our eye vision.
A
good daylighting system should deliver natural light without glare and
should have very little impact on 'envelope' of the building.
Why Daylighting?
The
gift of nature is daylight. It is essential for us as like as clean air
and water. Our life survives on it. Sometimes we are separated from
this basic need.
Natural
light has not only artistic benefits of full spectrum lighting but also
has significant impact on our health. It helps to maintain our health.
It has been researched by researchers that natural light with a balanced
spectrum can help maintaining our biological time. Natural light also
energizes our body.
Sometimes,
due to not having natural light people suffer from sleep depression,
sleep disorders and hormone imbalances which cause negative impact on
our health, concentration, and performance.
On
the other hand, a buildings with sufficient daylight creates happiness
and productivity in our life. These are significantly developed with the
help of high quality natural daylight.
High
quality daylighitng can significantly decrease the use of electric
lighting which contributes to save energy and money. It also reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
Benefits of Daylighting
Daylighting has some significant benefits. These are as follows:
- It is observed that daylighting can develop people's lives in many ways. For example, in office settings, daylighting can increase productivity and worker satisfaction.
- Natural light contributes to overcome patient's disease in healthcare. It also develops sleep cycles.
- During study, daylighting increases our learning speed and attention.
- Sun light contains vitamin D which is essential for our body. It is important for the growth of children.
- In factory, warehouse and industrial settings, daylighting delivers higher quality of full-spectrum lighting in comparison to standard HID lights which increases the productivity of workers and also keep the floor environment healthy.
- Daylighitng saves energy of the building and improves quality of our life to include daylighting.
Options to include Daylighting
There
are lot of options to include daylight into your building space. But,
it is necessary to design and plan each option very carefully. For
example, skylights and windows are common solutions for simple daylight,
but each have their respective disadvantage. Windows provide views and
perimeter daylight. They can be good or poor source of daylight
depending on building orientation in a particular season and time of the
day. Direct sunlight flow through the glass produces bright spots or hot-spots which move according to the move of sun. These
types of problems also occur with most skylights and even tubular
skylights. Sometimes, perimeter or skylight solutions need shades or
other systems. It is done by turning off the sun which decreases the
benefits to occupants and the operation of the building.
For
industrial, commercial and multistory apartment buildings, it is
important to plan and design daylighting system very carefully so that
it does not decrease building efficiency and occupant productivity. It
should also be considered that it is not allowing excessive heat gain or
loss.