Don’t Be Dim!
The right light is more important than you think

By RaeAnn Slaybaugh

Try this: Teach your Sunday School outside on the next bright, sunny day. Or conduct Bible study on the lawn under the blue sky this week. When you do, if it seems like moods are lighter and interest levels are peaked, it’s no coincidence. Sunlight will do that to a person.

Nowhere is this discovery more useful than in the classroom, where the proven benefits of natural light have had powerful impact on design. Unfortunately, a number of trends in this arena pushed for fewer and darker-tinted windows, until daylight had been essentially excluded from most classrooms. That, experts say, was a big mistake.

Barbara Erwine is a Seattle-based lighting consultant for Cascadia Conservation, and Lisa Heschong is a partner in the Heschong Mahone Group in Fair Oaks, Calif., an organization that has conducted several key studies on lighting and its effects on learning. At the latest LightFair International convention in San Francisco, Erwine and Heschong regaled the benefits of letting the sunshine back in.

“Often, windows are reduced or removed during classroom renovations in the name or energy efficiency and modernization,” they explained. “Proponents of efficiency tended to view [them] as net energy losers.”

However, both women say there are compelling reasons why daylight ought to be reconsidered. First, the energy savings from turning off the lights during the day alone can shave as much as 25 percent off electricity spending every year. Secondly, recent studies have linked the presence of daylight with improved student academic performance.

A 2001 analysis by the Heschong Mahone Group studied elementary students in districts from California, Washington and Colorado. From the beginning to the end of the school year, students in the most daylit classrooms scored 20 percent higher in math and 26 percent higher in reading than students in classrooms with the least daylight. The results remained consistent when a new group of teachers was tested one year later.

Based on the findings of a similar study conducted by the Alberta Education Department in Canada, the link between natural light and lesson retention has long been suspected—and validated. Over a three-year period, Canadian students were exposed to different light types before and after testing, showing that children in less than ideal lighting conditions—mostly harsh fluorescent—were absent an average of 3.2 days per year more than those whose classrooms more closely resembled the world outside.

“The relationship of light to physical well-being is not surprising, nor are the effects of color,” says Warren E. Hathaway of the Branch Planning and Information Services Division of Alberta Education.

“Blues of the sky, the greens of vegetation, and earth tones are part of our natural environment. It seems reasonable that students will be most comfortable and relaxed in environments that most closely simulate these conditions.”

Lighting goes to school

When speculating about how this knowledge will manifest itself, Erwine and Heschong see the future in strategically placed indirect lighting—especially controls, accent and task lights—as well as the use of full-spectrum lamps and polarized diffusers.

These concepts are especially relevant in the “wired” classrooms of today, according to Randall Fielding, educational planner, architect and editor of DesignShare, an international, Web-based forum that boasts 20,000 visitors every month. Fielding cites the presence of notebook computers as an example. “Lighting directed from the front or behind of the screen can reflect into the learner’s eyes, causing eyestrain,” he explains. “On the other hand, if light is directed from the left or right, it bounces off the screen to the side rather than into the learner’s eyes.”

Of course, altering this setup can be a problem in pre-existing facilities, in which case Fielding suggests installing indirect lighting, specifically pendant-mounted fixtures placed 18 to 24 inches below the ceiling. “This reflects most of the light off the ceiling,” he says, “and these fixtures may include a portion of direct or filtered- down lights.”

But what if your classrooms were built a long time ago and already are shrines to harsh fluorescence? Fortunately, with the use of polarized diffusers, there is hope. Whereas the atmosphere polarizes light from the sun, resulting in reduced glare and the blue color of the sky, polarizing lenses filter fluorescent lamp light the same way. Combined with full-spectrum lamps, these chemically treated acrylic lenses mimic the health benefits of daylight. Some experts even say the effect so closely resembles daylight that it can be difficult to tell the difference.

Spotlight on daycares and nurseries

In nurseries and toddler spaces, experts say the goal should be to create help children feel, literally, at home. Lighting plays a big role in making this happen, as indicated in the Head Start Center Design Guide produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). According to the DHHS, light should remind infants of a residential environment. Moreover, these experts recommend broad ambient light for large-muscle activity spaces as well as task lighting for manipulative activities such as reading, painting and close work.

Most centers prefer to use fluorescent lighting, which, if done right, is a great solution. In these centers, DHHS experts recommend electronic ballast fixtures since their high-frequency cycles avoid perceptible flickering and allow dimming.

On the advice of the Oregon Office of Energy, the Relief Nursery of Eugene even retrofitted its two- and three-lamp recessed fluorescent fixtures with the latest electronic ballast technology. (For 26 years, the nursery has provided therapeutic preschool and parenting classes for low-income families with risk factors of abuse.) This move, combined with replacing incandescent fixtures with more efficient compact fluorescent lights, resulted in a 70-percent savings in energy costs last year. Now the nursery has about $1,550 more in its budget than it did before—and just in time, too.

“We already had to close one classroom this year because of the financial situation we’re in,” says Director of Development Julie Tarter. “It worked out very nicely for us.”

Who knew lighting was so important? Not many. But now that you do, you can make the best choices for one of your core missions —children.