Daylighting
Does your building depend on artificial lighting? By lighting your property using the natural light of the sun, you can reduce your energy bills while creating a productive and healthy environment.
Daylighting is the use of natural sunlight to light your building – whether it’s a home or commercial building. Effective use of daylighting can lower the amount of energy your building uses every month by making artificial lighting less important.
As well as using natural light, modern daylighting systems also use energy efficient artificial lighting. These artificial lights work alongside the sun to provide a steady, consistent level of light to a building’s interior.
Are you interested in using daylighting to reduce your energy consumption? Read on to learn more about how daylighting works and its most significant benefits for your home or commercial property.
What is daylighting?
Daylighting involves the use of controlled sunlight to light your building. In contrast to artificial lighting, which uses artificial light alone to keep your building lit during the day and night, daylighting uses both natural and artificial light sources.
A daylighting system may consist of parts that use natural sunlight, such as windows and skylights, as well as an artificial lighting system that works around the presence of sunlight to provide a consistent level of interior light.
For example, many modern daylighting systems use windows and skylights with an automatic sensor that controls the level of artificial light. As sunlight decreases, the artificial lights inside the building become brighter, creating consistent lighting.
When the sun shines brightly, the artificial lights dim, reducing energy consumption during peak hours. This provides a consistent level of light while reducing the total amount of energy required to light your home or commercial building.
Daylighting systems come in many designs and configurations. For a small building or home, a daylighting system can be as simple as a skylight with an automatic light control that adjusts interior lighting based on the presence of sunlight.
In a large building, daylighting could involve the use of hundreds of small skylights and exterior windows, along with an artificial lighting system that powers a large range of interior spaces.
Since effective use of daylighting can lower the amount of energy required to light a building, it’s an important part of energy efficiency that has attracted the attention of businesses and homeowners alike.
What are the benefits of daylighting?
Daylighting has a wide range of benefits, from improving workplace productivity to reducing energy costs. Some of the most significant benefits of daylighting, for both residential and commercial settings, are listed below:
- Since daylighting uses natural sunlight instead of artificial lighting, it uses far less electricity than a typical artificial lighting system. Over the course of the day, artificial lighting levels adjust based on available sunlight.
- Because daylighting is so energy efficient, it costs far less to light your home or commercial building than with typical artificial lighting. This can lead to significant savings for homeowners and businesses.
- Natural light has been proven to increase workplace productivity and lead to improved health. For a commercial office, this means fewer absences caused by illness and a measurable increase in productive work.
- The skylights and windows used in modern daylighting systems are designed to minimize head transfer and ambient heat loss, ensuring that your home or building maintains a consistent temperature.
- Since daylighting provides ample natural light, it creates a more comfortable, spacious feeling interior. Many people feel more comfortable in naturally lit spaces than in interiors lit using artificial lighting.
Daylighting and energy efficiency
Daylighting is an extremely effective way to reduce your building’s energy usage. As residential lighting uses approximately 15% of all electricity, making your building’s lighting system more efficient can result in significant electricity savings.
Many homeowners use daylighting in combination with renewable energy to lower their usage of non-renewable energy even further. Daylighting can be a major part of making your home energy independent by reducing its electricity consumption.
A wide range of daylighting systems are available for both homes and commercial buildings. In many cases, the costs of installing daylighting are paid back in savings on your home or commercial building’s energy bills over the near to long term.
From improving your workplace’s productivity to reducing the amount of electricity required to light your building, daylighting has a wide range of benefits that make it an appealing investment for business owners and homeowners alike.
Learn more about renewable energy
Are you interested in switching to renewable energy? Daylighting, when used along with a source of renewable energy such as solar or residential wind, can make it far easier for your property to become energy independent.
We specialise in renewable energy and can help you learn more about the options that are available for your property. Our expert team can provide the information you need to switch to solar, wind or other renewable energy systems.
Would you like to learn more about the benefits of switching to renewable energy for your property? Contact us to learn more about how much you can save over the long term by generating your own energy from renewable sources.