The Invisible Light That’s Harming Our Health — And How We Can Light Things Better Amber Case Follow 7 min read · 4 hours ago 4 hours ago -- Listen Share
I recently spent a few weeks running a conference for a community of researchers and writers in a historic chateau in the French countryside. During this time, I also examined the history of the building and how texture, size and proportionality affected thinking in the space.
This experience turned out to be a perfect illustration of how some modern lighting choices can disrupt our experiences in places as beautiful as this.
This beautiful French chateau hosts a community of writers, artists and philosophers in the wintertime, and weddings in the summer. It’s been marvelously restored through a lot of love and hard work.
The Chateau was built in the 1650s on top of a hill overlooking a village of ~400 people in the countryside outside of Paris. During the day, all of the rooms were stunning, but at night, some of them began to feel uncomfortable.
One of the Chateau’s rooms in natural light.
In the past, this room might have been lit by the warm glow of candlelight or a warm incandescent lightbulb on a 100 year old chandelier. But now, like many historic buildings, analog bulbs had been replaced with LED lights for practical reasons; consistent brightness and reduced energy bills.
One room in particular felt worse than the others. I took my camera around to see why.
The light felt warm, but even with this warm light and beautiful interior, I didn’t feel “cozy”. I asked other participants in the room about this, and they also noted that when the light was on, the room felt uncomfortable. The camera told the story clearly:
The telltale signs of flickering lights — big bands of dark and light that show up on a camera.
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