With busy lifestyles and limited time, a good night's sleep is essential for tackling the day ahead. So what can you do to give your body the best chance at a good rest? Well, changing the way you use light in the evenings might just be the answer. Light plays an important role in helping our bodies identify the time of day and the levels of energy we should produce. As we continue to develop our understanding with increased research in these areas, we are discovering how the different colours and intensity of LED lights can impact not only our energy levels, but how well we sleep.
More than likely you’ve come across blue light in the media and how it suppresses sleep. Blue light plays an important role is aligning our circadian rhythm and exposure to blue light during the day is essential for increased energy levels and productivity. However with an increased reliance on computers, phones, tablets and TV’s, especially at night, our ability to sleep well is suffering. This is because these screens emit blue light which is keeping us awake even after we turn them off. The solution? You can dim your screens or ideally switch off your devices an hour before going to sleep. This gives your body time to adjust to the evening and produce more melatonin before falling asleep and now with LIFX schedules you don’t have to even turn your lights off. Simply set a recurring schedule for each night and let your lights dim naturally.
Now that we’ve prevented blue light from keeping us up at night, let’s work on getting an even better night’s sleep. Studies have shown that exposure to red light before going to bed can improve your sleep. Red light is the lowest energy, slowest moving form of visible light. When our eyes process red light the impact is much lower than that of a bright white light. You might ask, what does this have to do with sleep? In spite of the colour red often being associated with energy and activity, when used with lighting it’s meaning completely changes and instead encourages relaxation and calmness. This is because red light tricks our bodies into thinking there is very little or no light present and in turn encourages the production of melatonin. So by the time you're ready to fall asleep, your body will be too.
So go and enjoy a natural, uninterrupted sleep tonight with the help of LED coloured lighting.