Light: “God’s first creature.”
— Francis Bacon
Although executives wish their employees would “soar like eagles,” those same employees typically function in a workplace that suggests a chicken coop. (Speaking of coops, though a substantial proportion of consumers are willing to pay extra to get eggs from “free-range chickens,” I wonder how many consumers would pay extra to get goods or services from “free-range employees.”)
What got me thinking about office spaces was hearing from George Bria, a Chicago “light quality” consultant and president of the Association of Professional Energy Consultants, and an advocate for better lighting in offices. A year ago, I first wrote about cheap fluorescent tubes in offices, a.k.a. “plastic light,” “glare in a bottle” or “light wieners.” I suggested that anyone who wanted to see better contact Bria for information about where to get high-quality light bulbs, the ones that produce something close to actual daylight. And I can report that marvelous, eye-opening things transpired.
First, let me back up and say that if you put skylights in a warehouse, accidents decrease; put them in a store, and sales increase; in schools, test scores improve; in offices, morale and productivity rise. This makes sense when you remember that our eyes evolved over thousands of years to see best and most comfortably in natural, outdoor light.
But, if daylight is not available, lamps/bulbs are capable of reproducing something close, just more expensively. And when you’re trying to build or remodel an office facility as cheaply as possible, you throw up cheap lights that throw out cheap light.
Further, much of the country’s office space is leased, and what incentive is there for landlords to install expensive lighting? The upshot is this: Do it yourself. Don’t ask permission. All it takes to start is to buy two tubes, at $7 to $12 each. That’s what I recommended a year ago, and we now have results back from people who tried them.
My favorite example is from Kris Benishek of Dayton, Ohio: “I work in a hospital library–a windowless library with low ceilings and fluorescent lighting. I used to go home daily with eyestrain, sometimes having to close my eyes during the workday to rest them from what I called the `eerie, surreal lighting.’ I found the glare from reading on white paper an especial strain, and I know that my production was affected by the stress of attempting (and avoiding!) reading in that glaring light. I initially tried the color-balanced lighting in my office, and was so amazed at the difference it made –the daily eyestrain that I’d had for years went away!–I had the color-balanced lighting installed throughout the library. I can actually see again!”
Although use of all those noisy exclamation points in the library makes me want to go “Shhhh …,” what a telling image: a librarian who avoids reading because the glare creates eyestrain.
And from Dr. George Hazlehurst, M.D.: “Earlier this year, after trying some lamps at home, my wife and I donated some color-balanced lamps to an elementary school in Flagstaff, Ariz., where our daughter teaches 2nd grade. In addition, another teacher, inspired by the new lighting, has purchased on her own lamps for her classroom. Reports reaching me have been very positive.” Among those reports was this, from a teacher: “On the very day I installed the lights, the children appeared noticeably calmer.”
This might sound like overstatement but is echoed by other letters, such as from Greg Martindale, a certified public accountant in Palatine, who says: “No doubt I can see what I am reading better. But I can also `feel’ a significant difference.” Light wieners are so familiar an annoyance that we forget them, but take their glare away, and it’s like a distant car alarm shutting off. We relax, discovering the tension we’d felt only by its absence.
The upshot is this: Giving office workers the standard cheap lighting is like giving construction workers trowels instead of shovels in order to save on tools. For knowledge workers, including students, it’s not true that light is light; rather, light is equipment.
