LRC Video Series Highlights Lighting Effects on Circadian Rhythms

The Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has a new three-video series that introduces viewers to the way lighting can affect people’s health, specifically by influencing the circadian rhythms that control waking and sleeping. The series, hosted and narrated by the LRC’s director, Mariana Figueiro, may be a useful tool for reps and distributors talking with customers about lighting specifications in the context of employee health and productivity.

The first video is a general introduction to the concept of circadian rhythms, why they matter and how lighting can be used to influence them. With the second video Figueiro gets into the LRC’s Circadian Stimulus (CS) metric, which is a method for quantifying the extent to which lighting impacts the human circadian system. The video seeks to dispel some misconceptions about whether other metrics such as CCT can be a useful guide to the light source’s circadian effects. (Spoiler: they aren’t enough.) The third video introduces the LRC’s Circadian Stimulus Calculator, which quantifies the CS values of using one or more light sources together.

Check out the LRC’s Light and Health YouTube channel or view the first video in the series below.