Why? Well, it's better to wake up with daylight in the morning than to feel more awake during dinner time. Summer Time shifts our sunrise 1 hour back in the day, with more light in the evening. Without Winter Time, sunrise in winter would be at 10 am. Arriving at work in complete darkness would make this period even more depressing for many people.
The simple beautiful fact is, the power of daylight wakes us up! By this we mean the full strength of the sun even if its behind the clouds has a light power where bluish colours are more present in white light. This is about 4 to 10 times more light than we normally get in buildings.
This problem is worse as the majority of people is working indoors nowadays. There, the regular light level equals biological twilight, making us sleepy and moody during the day. Therefore, it's extra important to get at least 30 minutes of daylight in the morning. Our
body reacts to this with cortisol hormones that are needed to wake us up, have good alertness, concentration, and energy to perform.
Winter Time used to be our regular time, as this is when the sun is more above us in the sky at noon. This is what our ancestors and our evolution got used to. We deviate from this more or less natural rhythm with Summer Time, because the idea was that we can save on energy costs in the evening, but this energy saving comes at a cost to society, perhaps in an indirect way. This results in people being absent by sickness, making more mistakes, having more traffic accidents. So the conclusion is that daylight saving time (Summer Time) is not saving anything, but actually costs us a lot.
What we can do when choosing between Summer versus Winter Time. It's best to go for the Winter Time even though it sounds less sexy to many people. Please think of it as Standard
Time that brings people more In Sync with nature.
We at Sparckel wish you all the best with the upcoming changes going from Summer to Winter Time. Know that if you want to support your body and brain rhythms, dynamic daylight luminaires are a good investment to improve your indoor working and living spaces. It will make you feel more spring-like all year around!
