What is Lighting?
Lighting is the use of light to achieve a practical or aesthetic effect. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylight.
What is a Residential Building?
Lighting creates a feeling of emotions, it can make people happier. Light controls people’s behaviour and emotions. Lighting brings about thermal comfort, the control of lighting in a building can be used to control the mood of people. In residential buildings, the right amount of lighting in or entering determines the activeness, emotions, appetite, mind-set of the users. A building daylighting can be done using windows, light shelves and skylights. Daylight in building is sometimes the main source of light during the day. This can help save energy in a building instead of using artificial lighting, which represents a major component of energy consumption in buildings. Daylight is increasingly preferred by building users as a way to adequately illuminate indoor surfaces and save energy for electric lighting. It is especially preferred for physiological as well as psychological reasons. In both offices and homes, greater exposure to daylight improves people’s psychological health and their productivity.
It has been proposed by researchers that the use of optical units, atriums, remote-sourcing systems light-pipes, and light shelves would bring daylight into rooms more efficiently and intentionally, while improving illuminance and comfort.
Daylighting helps the brain produce more of the mood lifting chemical serotonin which keeps the body active and lack of sunlight which reduces serotonin which causes seasonal affective disorder. The symptoms include difficulty concentrating, low energy of fatigue, loss of interest in daily activities, moodiness, and sleeping excessive amounts.
The primary consideration during the design of a residential building should be luminous comfort, the level of satisfaction with daylighting.