Natural Light Benefits in Small Spaces

Between pulling out holiday decorations and hiding presents from Santa, you may have noticed something missing from your closets, attic, and storage spaces: natural light!

Natural Light in Stairwells

It stands to reason that the stairway is one of the areas in your home where sight is most important. At best, a dark stairwell is an inconvenience and, at worst, a serious hazard. For your family's safety, light and the ability to see clearly are essential for your stairwell. And it's been determined time and time again that natural light from above is best for visual acuity. That's where your stairway skylights come in.

Adding a skylight over your stairway not only brightens things up, it also spills natural light into surrounding rooms. This helps brighten up more of your home and can help you save more on your electric bill. Plus, if you opt for a venting skylight, you can open it up over your staircase for whole-home airing!

Natural Light in Closets

Closets, like most small spaces in a home, are often dark and unwelcoming without access to natural light. But how do you bring daylight to the darkest corners of your home? Well, where a traditional skylight won't fit, a Sun Tunnel® Skylight will!

Sun tunnels are comprised of a roof-mounted, light-collecting dome that delivers daylight to a space below through a tubular shaft with highly reflective interior coating. Sun tunnel domes can be mounted to almost any type of roofing material, and the tubes are available in rigid and flexible options; so no matter what your closet situation is like, there's a sun tunnel option to illuminate it with natural light.

A skylight or sun tunnel in the closet can help you keep it more organized too. With light coming from above, you can free up wall space where you might otherwise install traditional windows or artificial lighting. Natural light also gives your closet a brighter, more vibrant appearance, which can help it look cleaner and more organized.

More Natural Light Benefits

We've been talking about incorporating more natural light throughout your home, but why? What makes natural light better than artificial light? Here are four key benefits that give natural light the edge:

• Vitamin D Storage: We need Vitamin D to help our bones stay strong, as well as to prevent certain cancers, heart disease, depression, and weight gain. But as part of the Indoor Generation, we can't always relax in natural light enough to get the amount of Vitamin D our body needs. So, when you can't go out, bring the light in!
• Higher Productivity: If you often feel like you're dragging in the morning or like you can't seem to get those last bits of chores done at the end of the day, that's your body letting you know it needs more natural light. Studies have shown that the more we work in natural light, the higher energy levels we have compared to artificial light.
• Sounder Sleep: There's nothing quite like waking up from a restful night's sleep, where you're instantly ready to take on the day. And natural light can help with that! Sunlight is an environmental indicator that helps set the phases of our body's natural circadian rhythm. In other words, it helps you sleep sounder and wake feeling more refreshed.
• Visual Acuity: Our eyes are constantly under strain from computer screens, phones, and even harsh artificial light. Natural light aids in our ability to see more clearly without added strain. It also helps eye development in children and young adults.