Why We Need Human Centric Lighting

After understanding the definition of human centric lighting, it is important to know why we need this technology. 

Insufficient Light Exposure

Nowadays, people's lifestyles have undergone remarkable changes in this fast-paced world. Most people lack outdoor activities no matter in home or office, leading to significant reduction in the intake of natural light. Compared with outdoor lighting, indoor lighting usually has lower brightness and a single spectrum, making it difficult to meet the needs of the human body's physiological rhythms.

Insufficient natural light exposure has various adverse effects on the human body. First of all, light is a key factor in regulating the human body's biological clock. Being in an environment with insufficient light for a long time may result in circadian rhythm disorders, which in turn affect sleep quality and cause problems such as insomnia and nightmares. 

Also, natural light has positive impacts on mood adjustment. SAD is closely related to lack of sunlight exposure. People are frustrated and find it hard to focus. Besides, lighting bears on the secretion of human hormones, such as melatonin and cortisol. 

Therefore, in daily life, it is recommended to increase outdoor activity time and exposure to natural light appropriately. Or, using human centric lighting indoors that is more in line with human body rhythm. 

Health Awareness Increasement

People are no longer satisfied with lighting standards that only provide illumination. Human centric lighting is designed to meet our body’s natural needs for light. It mimics how sunlight changes throughout the day by carefully adjusting the color, brightness, and type of light. This helps support our body’s internal clock and overall well-being.

Human centric lighting isn’t just a tech upgrade. It’s a powerful way to improve modern life. By supporting health and comfort, it’s quickly becoming a must-have for creating better living environments.

Benefits of Human Centric Lighting in Commercial Environments.

Human centric lighting brings many effective benefits and profoundly affects our daily lives and working environment.

• Improve Concentration and Work Efficiency: Proper lighting conditions can enhance the brain's alertness and concentration.

• Elevate Sleep Quality: Using low color temperature and soft light at night can help inhibit the interference of blue light on melatonin secretion, which helps the body relax and fall asleep smoothly.

• Reduce Eye Fatigue: Human centric lighting creates a more comfortable visual environment by precisely controlling light intensity, color temperature and light distribution.

• Promote Emotional Stability: Light can affect people's mood. Soft, warm light brings comfort and reassurance, while cool light helps to refresh your mind.

• Follow Circadian Rhythm: It respects and supports the body’s biological clock, helping to regulate endocrine, immune and metabolic functions.

In addition, the combination of human centric lighting and LED technology also brings prominent energy saving benefits. The system automatically adjusts light parameters according to the time of day. It senses the intensity of indoor and outdoor light in real time. When the outdoor light becomes dim, such as on a cloudy day or at night, the indoor light will automatically increase; when the sun is bright, the light will automatically decrease.

Applications of Human Centric Lighting

Many places and scenarios are propitious to human centric lighting, such as school, office and health care facilities. Let's take a look at different settings and see how people in each one could benefit from HCL. In many situations, you'll find that HCL is simply the logical choice.

Office

Office space is one of the ideal application scenarios for human centric lighting. Here, improving concentration and reducing fatigue are key needs. In the morning, you can use high color 5000K to improve alertness, moderately lower the color temperature to 4000K in the afternoon, and switch to warm light 3000K in the evening to help you relax.

In addition, human centric lighting can improve employees’ emotional state and reduce the incidence of anxiety. This helps create a more comfortable and healthier office environment. This people-oriented lighting method is becoming an important trend in modern office space design.

Home

Human centric lighting is gradually becoming an important means to improve living quality. In the bedroom, smart dimmable lights can gently brighten in the morning to mimic a sunrise, helping you wake up naturally. At night, they can shift to a soft, warm glow with low brightness to encourage melatonin production and make it easier to fall asleep.

It can be tailored to suit different home environments. For movie watching, lower illumination levels help create a relaxed and cozy atmosphere. During gatherings, bright and warm lighting enhances the mood and supports social interaction.

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The WHO report states that improving school lighting can enhance the academic performance of students in low-income countries by 11%. For example, in Peru, when classroom lighting was upgraded from 150 lux to 500 lux, using 4000K high color rendering lights, students’ math test accuracy improved by 9.7% to 11.3%. Research shows this boost wasn’t just because of clearer visibility. It also had to do with how light affects the body’s internal clock. The right amount of blue light can suppress melatonin production and extend students’ peak focus time from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. by nearly 37 minutes.

For students with special educational needs, flexibly adjustable lighting solutions can also provide more personalized support. Light has a great impact on students’ academic performance.

Health Care Facility

Health care facilities can utilize human centric lighting to promote patients' recovery and regulate the schedules of medical staff. The ward adopts circadian rhythm lighting. Bright light during the day promotes activity, and warm light at night helps sleep. The operating room uses high color rendering LEDs to ensure accurate vision.

Also, human centric lighting helps old people reduce VDT eye fatigue. More and more elderly people use computers and mobile phones. The eyes of the elderly become less sensitive to light and are prone to eye fatigue. Intelligent lighting systems can effectively reduce VDT symptoms by adjusting the light source.

Industry

In industrial and manufacturing environments, human centric lighting can increase worker alertness and reduce accidents. Dynamic lighting is particularly suitable for shift work. Using high color temperature lighting during night shifts to keep people awake.

Adjusting factory lighting according to the functional requirements of different areas. For instance, in the precision assembly area, adopting LED light sources with high color rendering Ra≥90 and no flicker to ensure visual clarity. In the storage area, uniform lighting is emphasized to avoid shadow interference.

Animal Welfare

Human centric lighting is originally designed to support people’s biological rhythms and emotional well-being, but animals respond to light too. Recently, more researchers and designers have started focusing on how lighting can benefit animals, essentially creating an "animal version" of human centric lighting.

For pets, lighting doesn’t just affect their sleep schedules. It can also influence their mood and eating habits. Take cats, for example, they’re highly sensitive to light patterns, and too much artificial light can make them anxious. That’s why many premium pet stores and veterinary clinics now use lighting systems that mimic natural daylight changes to help animals feel calmer and more at ease.

In places like aquariums and zoos, lighting does more than enhance visual appeal. It plays a vital role in recreating the animals’ natural environment. Some species, like amphibians or nocturnal animals, require carefully managed lighting that reflects natural day-night cycles, UV levels, or even moonlight patterns to maintain healthy behaviors like feeding and mating.

When we design light environments for animals, we are also taking a step towards more comprehensive ecological lighting.

HCL stands out for its ability to imitate natural light, making it useful in many settings. It helps regulate our biological rhythms, improves how we see and feel in space, and even boosts productivity by creating better lighting conditions. As a result, HCL is becoming an essential part of modern healthy environments, making everyday life and work more comfortable and efficient.

Make the Switch to Human Centric Lighting with LEDVANCE 

Light is more than just illumination, it is also an invisible force that affects our health, mood and efficiency. Human centric lighting is a revolution. It breaks the limitations of traditional lighting.

As an explorer and leader in the industry, LEDVANCE is deeply involved in the field of human centric lighting and provides advanced LED solutions. From office space to home environment, we make every beam of light better understand your needs.

Welcome to cooperate with us to create a healthier and smarter light environment.​​​