Every aspect of a student's learning environment is vital, even the lighting! In fact, next to sleep and nutrition, lighting has the most powerful impact on a student's ability to learn and perform. Here are some reasons why you should consider LED lighting for your school, university or learning center.
The Power of Light
Intuitively and metaphorically, humans know light is powerful. We understand this best when in the dark. The absence of light drastically affects us cognitively and behaviorally. Concurrently, the presence of light has a profound and positive effect on human behavior. Here is a list of benefits that are the result of proper lighting conditions:
- Essential for healthy activity and rest pattern (Wurtman, 1975)
- Visual performance increases (Grangaard, 1995)
- Essential for cognition (Taras, Potts-Datema, & Pearson, 2005)
- Essential for positive moods (McColl, 2001)
- Alertness increases (Wright, Sherman, Jones 2004)
- Enables important hormone production (Leproult, Colecchia, L’Hermite-Baleriaux, & Van Cauter, 2001)
The Power of Biologically-Optimized Lighting for Students
Optimal lighting conditions are immensely beneficial for humans and especially students. Unfortunately, hosting class outside is not always an option, so we must rely on science and technology to replicate optimal light conditions.
"Biologically-optimized" lighting is the process of recreating and harnessing the known benefits of light via artificial means. LED lighting is one way that biologically optimized light can be used to harness the benefits of light for education. One research study used LED’s to simulate the outdoor sky. By using a combination of white and blue LEDs and electronically controlling the lighting to mirror that of the daytime sky, significant benefits were achieved. Some of the benefits of using LED lighting to simulate an outdoor environment included:
- General increase in student productivity
- Improved standardized test scores
- Increased information retention
- Students reported a sense of heightened alertness
- Students reported an increased sense of vigor
It is believed that the use of LEDs in the classroom shifts the biology of the circadian rhythm to a state closer to midday, releasing hormones responsible for “alert" and "aware" feelings. LED lighting can therefore shift the student’s biology into a state more conducive to learning regardless of whether it is earlier or later in the day.
Teacher Productivity
The benefits are not just for the students! Even teachers experienced increased productivity. As with students, they felt more alert and invigorated, leading to better teaching environments.
Highly Efficient…
One of the great benefits of LED lighting is efficiency over fluorescent lighting, which is most often used in classrooms. Let’s compare:
- Extremely long life span — LEDs can last 10,000 to 60,000 hours versus fluorescent lights that last roughly 1,500 hours.
- Noise pollution — LEDs are silent while fluorescent lights hum and buzz, which can be distracting for students.
- Environmentally helpful — LEDs do not contain the harmful materials, such as mercury, that fluorescent lighting contains.
- Energy efficient - LEDs consume far less energy than fluorescent light bulbs and far, far less than standard filament light bulbs.
LEDs Make Both Sense and Cents
LED lighting is clearly the smarter choice for school administrators wanting to improve learning. Additionally, LEDs have less impact on the environment and and cost less from an operational stand point.
