Making home work
Around one in five of us work from home, and the more senior you are, the more likely you are to have a choice about where you log in – Who are the hybrid workers? School children don’t have much choice about where they settle down to study, with a recent survey suggesting that nearly a quarter of teens are spending nine hours or more at a desk per week, at the kitchen table, or balancing their laptop on their knees in front of the telly – Homework Statistics 2026: Insights from 2,000+ UK Students. Perhaps unsurprisingly, investing in an inside-the-home office space could boost a property value by over 15 % – or £40,000, according to a recent article in the Independent – The work-from-home setup that could lift your house value by £40,000.
While we may be living longer, more of us in the UK at least are spending our later years in poor physical health – Health state life expectancies, UK: 2018 to 2020, with mobility issues affecting around one in three adults over 70 – the stairs feel too steep, the garden’s too big and you don’t want to drive at night. A specialist ‘senior’ housing unit might be on your radar – it’s a lucrative and fast-growing sector – UK Seniors Housing Market Update. But the vast majority of us will end up staying put in our familiar ‘mainstream’ homes, with a UK Parliamentary Select Committee pointing to the urgent need to adapt existing housing stock and neighbourhoods with our changing needs in mind – Age UK – Written Evidence (NTC0089).
Bottom line, our buildings need to work hard to keep us happy, healthy and safe from birth into our twilight years
What’s that got to do with the lights?
The average home was built before we had any idea about how much the right light during the day- and darkness at night – matters for our physical and mental health. Regular patterns of bright days and dark nights are linked to improved fertility – Circadian-Light Hypothesis for Fertility and Birthrate Management, academic performance – Irregular sleep/wake patterns are associated with poorer academic performance and delayed circadian and sleep/wake timing, our ability to cope with pain – Systems and Circuits Linking Chronic Pain and Circadian Rhythms, and reduced risk of falls – Impact of Upgraded Lighting on Falls in Care Home Residents. Simply adding good-quality task lighting and simple preset controls can help older people enjoy reading and more visually demanding activities, increasing comfort and wellbeing – Improved indoor lighting improved healthy aging at home – an intervention study in 77-year-old Norwegians.
And yet building regulations are driving a shift towards smaller windows for improved thermal performance, reducing levels of daylight during the day for those who can’t – or don’t get outside.
The switch to LED has compounded the problem, with the average home bright enough at night to suppress melatonin – a marker of circadian entrainment – by 50% for around half of us – Evening home lighting adversely impacts the circadian system and sleep. Light pollution is linked to increased risk of depression in adolescence – Artificial light at night and risk of depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis, antinatal depression in new mothers – The association between outdoor artificial light at night exposure and antenatal depression and anxiety symptoms: A retrospective cohort study in China, and neurodegenerative diseases into our later years – Modern lights on neuropathology of Alzheimer’s disease.
I’m seeing increasing interest in the potential for thoughtful daylight and lighting retrofits with reliable and intuitive controls that include black-out blinds, integrated with ambient sensing and care support platforms to create spaces that help us all to live, work and play. I’m also starting to see some well-designed standalone products that don’t need any rewiring at all.
If you’re in London on the 3rd of June, please join Maia Lemlij, Jeff Hayward, Laurence Turner and me, for coffee and conversation about how we can design healthier, happier homes for all, hosted by Abby Fox and the team at LC-AV. Link to register is here.
Playing safe at Clerkenwell Design Week
I love the buzz of Clerkenwell Design Week, the roar of laughter from the pavement outside a pub on a bright spring afternoon, the fluttering banners and sunlight filtering through fresh green leaves, brochures and business cards and the chance to raise a glass with so many friends.
But pondering themes and lessons learnt, I was struck by the overwhelming preoccupation with safety, hinting at a deep anxiety – perhaps unsurprising in the current climate: comforting CAD-perfect curves, muted tones, muffling materials and endless talk of ‘inclusive’ design – although anyone who struggles with uneven pavements or steps, to read tiny white text on a pink page or follow a panel debate in a packed basement with a noisy ventilator rattling away might have wished to see more of the walk and less of the talk.
Plenty of polite references to sustainability, but missing the inconvenient edge of urgency, endless clouds of opal, marbled glass and shadow-play lampshades, but vanishingly little interest in the quality of the light itself, one or two ingenious technical innovations, but all marginal gains, lacking the confidence to inspire us to think again.
I’m glad I went, as much for the things I didn’t see as for those I did.