Working from home has become very commonplace over the last few months as a result of the pandemic and lockdown restrictions, and it’s essential that you make sure your at-home office’s lighting system is put together properly, or you could be risking your physical and mental health.

Lighting design can have a real impact on our overall health and wellbeing, as well as affecting our productivity at work, so make sure you’ve considered direct and indirect light, as well as task and accent lights, ambience and so on.

Bad lighting can result in headaches, eye strain, fatigue and so on, which will definitely take its toll on your health, as well as how much work you get done each day, and you might be surprised at how quickly this actually happens. 

Make excellent use of natural light if you can, positioning your desk sideways on to the window if possible so that you get enough light coming in without the glare. It also helps to be able to look out of the window regularly, so you can give your eyes a break from any screens you use for work.

Try to build up the light in layers, focusing on ambient or general lighting, task lighting and accent lighting.

General lighting is the light used to help you navigate your way through a room safely, but with a home office, make sure that you have the light distributed evenly so you can easily bring in other types of lighting without creating big shadows in the space, which could contribute to fatigue and eye strain.

Task lighting is important in a home office because you need to be able to work on your computer, write notes and read with ease, so make sure you have some source of bright, focused light in place to help with this.

And just because it’s a home office doesn’t mean it can’t be an attractive, welcoming space, so bring in accent lighting to highlight any architectural features of interest you may have in the room, or your favourite pieces of artwork.

Since you’re going to be in there every day getting the job done, you need to create a work environment that you actually look forward to spending time in.

Human-centric lighting should be the focus of all interior design projects, making sure that we’re subjected to the right kind of light at the right times of day so as not to have an impact on our circadian rhythm (our internal clock).

Lighting can really have an impact on how well we sleep, our productivity levels, how we feel… so it’s important to get it right, especially in places in which we spend a lot of time. So if you have been feeling a little lacklustre of late, it could be down to your lighting system. It might be time to make a few changes in this regard.

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