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When office employees return to work, they may find that buildings with increased natural light help them to work better during the day and sleep better at night.

We know that sunlight exposure is important for regulating our body clocks and sleep patterns. But many people don鈥檛 get enough natural light because they usually spend their days in artificially lit offices with small windows or windows that are shaded with blinds to reduce glare.

Mohamed Boubekri at the University of Illinois and his colleagues wondered if increasing natural light in offices would help employees to sleep better.

In November 2019, Boubekri and his colleagues randomly allocated 30 office staff to work in a typical office suite with a sheer fabric blind covering three-quarters of its window, or an identically-arranged suite next door with a window made of electrochromic glass, which can be tinted electronically to let in maximum natural light while minimising glare.

The participants spent a week working in one office before switching to the other for a week. The study was funded by the US company View, which supplied听the electrochromic glass windows used in the study and participated in the research.

Window into sleep

While in the office with the electrochromic window, participants were exposed to about eight times more natural light than in the other office suite. They slept 37 minutes more per night on average, as measured by motion-detector devices worn on their wrist. They also scored 42 per cent higher in a range of strategic thinking tests.

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鈥淭his is a very simple intervention to improve sleep,鈥� says Jonathan Cedernaes at Uppsala University in Sweden. The benefits of good office lighting could go beyond work performance and may also have a range of health benefits, he says.

Office staff who are working from home due to the covid-19 crisis may have sub-optimal lighting, which could affect their sleep and cognitive performance, says Boubekri.

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