Our bodies thrive in the full range of daylight, from infrared to ultraviolet. The more time we spend in natural light environments builds our resiliency to the damage we take on as a result of modern life’s insufficient indoor light environments. But it doesn’t need to be that way.
Modern buildings are lit just enough to see, nothing more, and the eye is incredibly adaptable! An indoor environment is often a thousand times brighter than inside, yet our eyes adapt in seconds. We can compare brightnesses rather easily side by side, but we normalize to the lack of light in a room rather quickly.
On top of rooms being dramatically more dim than a natural outdoor environment, the SPECTRUM of the light is important too! Two lights can look nearly identical in brightness and even color temperature, but have a dramatically different impact to the body under it.
Common white LED lighting is deeply deficient in three bands: Violet, cyan (sky blue), and red/IR. Violet is the most overlooked in this list and the topic of the rest of this email.
Right on the edge of visibility.
Violet light sits just at the edge of what we can see with our eyes, right on the borderline of ultraviolet.
Our bodies have three non-visual light sensors at least partially sensitive to violet light. They're found not only in the eyes, but in our skin, other organs, and even fat cells, all part of a separate non-visual photoreceptor system. In animal studies, this system is linked to metabolism, body heat and more. A key job of these light sensors is setting our master body clock in the brain (the SCN) and helping local clocks like the pancreas’ and skin's keep time. These are the “Opsins” you may have been hearing more about recently.
All three main non-visual photoreceptors (OPN3, OPN4, OPN5) were discovered only within the last 30 years, the latest in 2003 (OPN5). Researchers are still mapping what they do, and the list of tissues and processes they touch keeps growing. We're only beginning to see how connected these systems are.
Inside vs. at your desk…
Outdoors, violet light is abundant. A team in Tokyo measured outside and inside across the city.
|
Setting |
Violet light (360 to 400 nm) |
|---|---|
|
Outdoors, sunny day |
583 µW/cm² |
|
Outdoors, cloudy day |
271 µW/cm² |
|
Outdoors, yearly average |
~ 310 µW/cm² |
|
Indoors |
~ 0 µW/cm² |
Even a cloudy afternoon offers significant violet light. But indoors, because windows and glasses lenses block violet light, and common LED lights skip the range completely, the reading falls to almost nothing.
Read the study: [Violet Light Is Abundant Outdoors but Deficient Indoors in Modern Lifestyle in Tokyo (Kondo et al., 2025)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40238572/)
In another study of adults with myopia, eyes exposed to violet light grew about a quarter as much over five years as eyes behind lenses that blocked violet.
Just go outside.
The easiest way to get violet back into your life is stepping outside. Go outside early in the morning, violet light is only one of the many reasons this practice is a great idea. Even when it is overcast, do what you can to make the habit stick! Just make sure there are no sunglasses or windows between you and the sky.
Take your lunch outside. Take sun breaks. Take phone calls outside when you can. You get the picture… Get more sun, just find some shade before you burn.
For the times you can’t…
While nothing can replace the intensity or feeling of a bright blue sky, we strive to deliver the second best option for light exposure with our thoughtfully designed devices.
Buildings can and will become better, more beautiful, and more attuned to our biological needs. At Chroma, we’re building towards a world where this happens sooner. A world where truth and beauty are abundant. There’s a war between light and darkness in the world, and we stand solidly in the camp of light, love and truth. We seek to empower our customers to become who they are, to see and create their own light in the world, to reject darkness and evil, to truly live and shape the future.
