Creating the perfect home office environment is essential for both productivity and comfort. Lighting is an important thing to think about because it directly affects your mood, alertness, eye strain, and your ability to focus. There are many lighting choices for your home office. Let’s take a closer look:
Lighting Fundamentals
Mix Of Light Types & Light Sources
You should have a mix of direct and indirect light sources in a well-lit home office. Use
- desk lamps
- floor lamps
- light fixtures on the ceiling
- natural light from windows
To make sure your home office is well-lit, you may want to use different types of lighting, such as ambient, task-lighting and, if you’ve got the budget, accent lighting.
Ambient lighting gives the room a base level of brightness, while task lighting shines a light on specific work areas, and accent lighting shines a light on artistic pieces or shelving or other home office accessories you have and can make your office look better.
Maximize Natural Light
Make use of natural light as much as you can. Place your desk near a window so you can get enough light (without being bothered by glare.) You can put your desk and computer screens in front of or next to windows, or you could turn your desk so that it faces north or south to avoid the shadows changing too much during the day.
Sunlight, even through glass, provides a lot more than mere light. It can help energize your body so you can work better. Sunlight also changes throughout the day, giving your body important circadian cues so that you’ll be able to sleep better at night.
If you have the choice, set up your home office in a room that faces South for the most amount of daylight. (Instead of North.)
But watch out for bright sunlight, which can cause glare on your monitor at certain times of the day. You might want to use blinds or curtains to control how much sunlight comes in.
Home Office Light Brightness Matters
One other thing to pay attention to is how bright your home office is. Your desk should have a good amount of light so that your eyes don’t get tired or strained.
You can buy an inexpensive light metre to measure the lux of your office to see if it is bright enough.
The brightness of light matters a ton when it comes to energy and focus because it affects hormones such as serotonin and melatonin. According to a 2021 study, an office with 3000k colour and 750 lux was ideal for working. That means natural incandescent lighting, putting your desk next to a window, and adding more lights until you get to that brightness on your metre.
How to Choose Light Bulbs
Colour Temperature
It’s important to think about the colour temperature when choosing lights for your home office. This is measured in Kelvin (K) and affects whether the light looks warm or cool.
Choose a colour temperature between 2700K and 3000K for a home office to create a balance between warm, inviting light and a stimulating place for work.
Levels of Brightness
In addition to the colour temperature, the brightness level, which is measured in lumens, is another important thing to think about when picking bulbs for your home office. A 40-watt (or equivalent LED light) usually gives off between 400-500 lumens, while a 60-watt (or equivalent LED) gives off around 800 lumens.
Lightbulb Spectrums & CRI (Colour Rendering Index)
Incandescent bulbs generate light through heat. It’s not unlike a mini-sun right in your home office. This heat is what makes them “inefficient.”
However, an argument could be made that:
- Incandescent bulbs are not inefficient during winter months when you have the heat on. The heat generated by the bulbs won’t be wasted.
- The inefficient wavelengths found in the infrared spectrum, which is not visible, may actually be good for our eyesight.
See this article on CNN (2020) about red infrared light being good for our eyes.
So during this process of making heat, the incandescent light bulb generates every possible wavelength in the visible spectrum. This means that it can bounce off different coloured items in your office and show you every single colour.
More “efficient” lighting will remove wavelengths, so it requires less power to run, making them more “energy efficient.”
LEDs and fluorescent bulb wavelengths are specifically chosen to use less energy. The regular LED light bulb will look like this:
When the missing yellow and red wavelengths, that means it can’t bounce off the object the same, and the colour appears wrong. Everything will appear more blue and cold.
If you’ve ever thought you looked a bit pale and rough in LED lighting, now you know why. This affects the paint colours, any art you have up, etc.
Manufacturers have now created a new standard called CRI (Colour Rendering Index), which is how accurate the colours render under the light compared to the sun. The score is out of 100, and the higher the rating, the more colours you’ll be able to see.
I personally recommend incandescent bulbs as they are the most pleasing and include wavelengths that are good for our eyes. If your country has banned them, you can look for “Rough Service” incandescent bulbs, which are just overbuilt a bit more as they’re meant to be sturdier for work-oriented jobs.
But if you prefer to buy LEDs, make sure to look for one with a high CRI rating if you want to look your best in video meetings, etc. (They are more expensive.) Make sure to get the ones with a lower number of kelvin for a warmer tone.
Light bulbs that don’t flicker
Even though some people think energy efficiency is all there is to worry about, you should also put your health and well-being first when you choose lights for your home office.
People often have trouble with lights that flash quickly, called flickering, which can give you headaches, make your eyes tired, and even throw off your body’s internal clock.
To avoid these problems, choose lighting choices that don’t flicker or have advertised a low-flicker rate. Those bulbs will have been designed to remove flicker as much as possible. Different types of bulbs and different manufacturers will have different qualities and, therefore, different pricing. You often get what you pay for.
Optimal Home Office Lighting Set-Up
Reducing Glare and Shadows
To make a comfortable and productive home office, it’s important to keep glare and shadows to a minimum on your desk. First, think about how to set up your desk or work area so that direct sunlight doesn’t hit your computer screen. This can cause glare and strain your eyes because you’re squinting too much.
If you can, put your computer so that it is perpendicular to any windows. This will keep shadows from showing up on the screen. To help with this, you might want to buy a flexible desk lamp that gives you bright but moveable light so you can work better.
In addition to where you put things, you can use lampshades that smooth and scatter otherwise harsh light to spread light around your office. You can also use a floor lamp that shines up to bounce light off walls and ceilings to get rid of dark shadows and make the room brighter.
Desk Setup With A Task Light
When picking a desk light, you might want to use a desk lamp that you can move, and that matches your style. Because of this, you can direct the light to particular work areas when you need to.
I am a big fan of the clamp aesthetic, as it looks a bit more industrial/creative.
Ambient Lighting On The Ceiling And Walls
When planning your home office, ambient lighting is another thing to think about. Ambient light can be softened and spread out with the help of wall sconces and floor lamps that shine upward. These types of lighting help cut down on the direct glare from ceiling lights and make the space more comfortable to work in.
If you’re renting or you don’t want to do any hardwired wall lighting, you can get plug in wall-sconces or hang some plug-in pendant lighting:
There are lots of cool options for floor lamps that work well in the home office:
Make sure it will fit where you want it to without being too big or getting in the way. And choose a floor lamp that goes with the design and style of your office. Make sure it fits in with the rest of your furniture and gives off your own personal vibe.
When choosing a wall lighting option, think about where you might need more ambient light and where you might want to put the fixtures. You don’t even need to rewire your home office. A lot of wall sconces have cords that will plug in.
When you put these things together, you get a well-lit, flexible home office place that helps you be more productive and comfortable while you work.
What lights work best for video conferencing?
Watch Out For Glare
Good lighting can make a huge difference in the quality of your video, making your video meetings look more professional.
First, think about how much light comes in from the outside. If you have a window near your desk, try to set it up so that the light comes from right in front of you. This will help get rid of shadows and give your face even lighting. But don’t put the window right behind you. This can cause glare and make it hard for people on the call to see your face.
Softbox For Video Meetings
Next, if you do a lot of video meetings, you can buy a dedicated softbox lamp on a tripod with LED lighting. While I prefer incandescents, for video, LED makes the most sense as they won’t make you hot when lighting you directly. It will make your home office slightly uglier, but it’ll make your video look incredible. There are lots of options out there that are reasonably priced. This LED set-up also has a colour temperature setting, so you won’t look so pale.
Lastly, pay attention to the colours of your room. White walls and desks can help reflect light around and make your video calls easier to see with less light. On the other hand, dark walls can soak up light, meaning you’ll need brighter lights in the room. But dark walls can look cool on video by giving depth and mood. With the right lighting, your body can stand out well against a darker background, looking dramatic. So if you’ve got lots of natural light or can buy more lighting, a darkly painted wall can look great.
The Wrap Up
It’s worth putting some effort into your lighting for your home office. Do the research, buy everything you need to, and then forget about it.
The money you put into proper lighting will pay you back by making your body more productive, and you’ll feel better while working from home. You’ll know you have a good setup when you want to spend time in your home office.
Nothing beats natural light, though. Think hard when you’re considering putting your home office in the basement or in some dark nook in your place. If you’re going to be spending many hours there each day, a good chunk of your entire life, it should be one of the best places in the house.