Rosetta Stone

August 20, 2020

Daylight + Satisfaction

Talking Points • Research Brief • Collection Database


Daylight – Satisfaction Talking Points

Summary

While there are many factors that impact the environmental satisfaction for building occupants, natural daylight has been shown to be one of the most important. Daylight has been shown to increase customer’s mood and perception of spaces, particularly in healthcare and retail environments. Daylight is important for employees too, helping increase job satisfaction and preventing burnout and turnover due to stress.

Keywords

Daylight, satisfaction, visual system, visual performance, mood

Improved Customer Satisfaction

  • In retail settings, access to adequate natural daylighting has shown to improve an individual’s mood and perception of a space, increasing the customer’s overall satisfaction with the experience. (van Bommel 2006).
  • For hospital patients, adequate daylighting has been found to be a key component affecting their satisfaction with their hospital stay (Ulrich 2008).

Improved Job/Employee Satisfaction

  • Access to a minimum of 3 hours of sunlight a day resulted in less stress and higher employee satisfaction at work (Boubekri 2014, Ulrich 2008).
  • Based on survey data of hospital staff, improving access to daylight has the most positive environmental impact on staff satisfaction of changes made (Ulrich 2008).
  • Employees seated near windows were more satisfied with their job, while those with less daylight access complained more and had much less job satisfaction and positivity (Edwards 2002).
  • Moving to daylit offices has been shown to decrease rates of employee turnover, in some cases by 200%, and received a record number of job applicants and transfer requests (Edwards 2002).

Key References

Review Articles
  • Aries, Mbc, Mpj Aarts, and J. Van Hoof. “Daylight and Health: A Review of the Evidence and Consequences for the Built Environment.” Lighting Research & Technology 47, no. 1 (2015): 6-27.
  • Edwards, L., & Torcellini, P. (2002). Literature Review of the Effects of Natural Light on Building Occupants
  • Joseph, A. (2006). The impact of light on outcomes in healthcare settings (No. Issue Paper #2). Concord, CA: The Center for Health Design.
  • Ulrich, Roger S, Craig Zimring, Xuemei Zhu, Jennifer DuBose, Hyun-Bo Seo, Young-Seon Choi, Xiaobo Quan, and Anjali Joseph. “A Review of the Research Literature on Evidence-Based Healthcare Design.” HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal 1, no. 3 (2008): 61-125.
  • Van Bommel, Wout J.M. “Non-visual Biological Effect of Lighting and the Practical Meaning for Lighting for Work.” Applied Ergonomics 37, no. 4 (2006): 461-66.
Primary Research
  • Bedrosian, T.A., Fonken, L.K. & Nelson, R.J. Endocrine effects of circadian disruption. Annu. Rev. Physiol. 78, 109–131 (2016).
  • Boubekri, M, Cheung, I, Reid, K, Wang, C, Zee, P. Impact of windows and daylight exposure on overall health and sleep quality of office workers: A case-control pilot study. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine 2013; 10: 603–61
  • Lucas RJ, Peirson SN, Berson DM, Brown TM, Cooper HM, Czeisler CA, Figueiro MG, Gamlin PD, Lockley SW, O’Hagan JB, Price LL, Provencio I, Skene DJ, Brainard GC. (2014). Measuring and using light in the melanopsin age. Trends Neurosci. 2014;37:1–9
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