Top 5 Home Office Lighting Ideas

When people talk about ergonomics, they refer to a concept that deals with the fit between an employee, and the tools and equipment that the employee uses. However, the focus almost always tends to be on furniture items, such as office desks and chairs. While there's no way to discount how important these are, lighting is often left out of the equation.

Below is a look at why lighting is so important and some home office lighting ideas that you can consider.

Never discount ergonomic lighting in your bid to create our productive workspace for your home office. If you have never considered this before, it could be the reason why you feel the drive to be so productive in a traditional office setting, while it is so hard for you to pull off at home. Without any further ado, it's time to jump into what makes workspace lighting so essential. 

How Is Lighting Important for Productivity?

1. Physical Factors

When you repeatedly work in poor lighting, you are doing your body a huge disservice. Your workstation lighting setup must be one of your home office design's central parts, or you may be creating a mini health crisis. 

Those who work under poor lighting are more susceptible to ergonomic problems, such as eye fatigue, blurred vision, headaches, and computer vision syndrome (CVS). Much of these problems only begin to emerge after a continuous routine of exposing yourself to the lighting anomalies.

Discomfort is one of the biggest enemies of productivity. Not only do you lose your ability to operate efficiently in an uncomfortable setting, but you also lose your ability to focus efficiently. Once you are feeling some level of discomfort, a part of your focus is going to remain on the problem. 

2. Mental Factors

There are also mental factors that office lighting solutions must take into consideration. Did you know that light has a huge hand in controlling your body's internal clock? Lighting helps keep your circadian rhythm in check, which has implications for sleep patterns, performance, mood, alertness, etc. 

As you spend a huge chunk of your day working, things can go very right or very wrong with the circadian rhythm, depending on your workstation lighting setup. 

What Is a Good Lighting Setup in the Workplace?

Now that you know how important office lighting solutions are to the equation, the next question becomes, how do you go about achieving the best lighting for your home office? The answer is to use the Home office lighting ideas below to ensure maximum comfort and efficiency. 

1. Use Soft Yellow Tones

The tone of the light you are staring at always needs to be one that is easy enough on your eyes. Getting this right means working to complement the way that your eyes perceive light. Thinking about this leads you to understand that yellow tones are the most manageable. That's one reason why blue light filter programs tend to change screens to some yellow variation to protect your eyes.

This is one of those home office lighting ideas that has multiple benefits for you. You are likely to find that you even sleep better after making this change. You may be worried about the savings that fluorescent lights can give you. While they are not wrong, it's more important for you to protect your eyes.

2. Light Diffusers

It would be best if you always worked to take in no more light than you need. The adjustability of light diffusers is perfect for achieving this objective. You must never forget the advantages that having natural light gives you. It's important to maximize natural light and reduce artificial variations when you can. 

As the presence of natural light lessens, you can increase the intensity of the artificial light to maintain the visibility you need. As far as home office lighting ideas are concerned, you can't go wrong with light diffusers.  

3. Use LED Desk Lamps

An LED desk lamp is another one of the best home office lighting ideas you could consider implementing. As is the case with light diffusers, having an adjustable lamp gives you a level of fine-grained control over your office lighting that makes your workflow that much more productive. Depending on your office environment, a normal LED lamp or a wide one may be more suitable for you.

Additionally, your desk lamp's arm should always allow for some level of adjustability so you can adjust the focus as easily as you can to the light intensity.

4. Match the Time of Day

The amount of light that you need as the day progresses alternates. That's one of the reasons that light diffusers are such a good idea. However, it would help if you got comfortable matching your overall lighting to what is needed throughout the day. Even the natural light that comes from outside has a variable color temperature.

Your desk lamp and light diffusers are not the only controls you have. There is also the matter of your monitor brightness. With fluctuations in external lighting, you should be changing your monitors as well. Your circadian rhythm can take a serious beating if your monitor is blasting its bright setting for the whole day. 

You could also opt to achieve this change on a scheduled basis using a third-party program.

5. Try to Achieve Optimal Lighting Placement

The final tip in the list of home office lighting ideas deals with how you place your lighting. Glare is a huge problem that office workers must work to eliminate. Your light placement should be one that puts a targeted focus on eliminating it. 

Understanding how direct and indirect light sources work and how to use them to your advantage is very important. Direct light sources are highly sought after, but they create dark areas and shadows outside of the light's focus. Therefore, you end up with a lighting imbalance problem that is still incredibly unhealthy.

Instead of focusing downwards, indirect light sources distribute their light in an upward motion, which results in more balanced illumination. Once you don't have a focused area of light, you eliminate having to deal with glare. 

Wrap up

Neither direct nor indirect light sources work well on their own. The best workstation lighting setup is one that takes advantage of both.