We Believe Revolutionary Biodynamic Circadian Driven Lighting Technology Is The Future Of Lighting Design

Thanks to advancements in color tuning and lighting control technology, it is now possible to produce the complex nature of daylight indoors.

Lighting control systems can mirror the variations in intensity and color that are intrinsic in the sun’s daily cycle and deliver these different types of light at the right time of the day. Lighting controls pave the way for interior spaces that support the internal clock of the human body, offering a healthier and less disruptive alternative to the traditional built environment.

Our Process Can

• Integrate tunable biodynamic natural lighting fixtures and lighting control into your home or office environment to create living and work environments with the optimal conditions for physiological and psychological health and wellness, as well as maximum productivity.
• Integrate the biggest advancement we’ve seen in lighting by simplifying design, installation and startup of residential and commercial lighting control projects by utilizing the right products and systems to meet the needs of each space or room in a building for monitoring, management and control.
• Leverage biodynamic lighting information toward creating a healthy environment that goes well beyond simple lighting and improves the quality of life and work being done.
• Dramatically reduce the time required to complete each phase of a lighting control project while greatly improving efficiency and scalability.

Biodynamic Circadian Tunable Lighting – A Human-Centric Approach to Environmental Lighting Design

Color temperature and light intensity have emerged as important metrics in lighting. They are closely aligned with workplace productivity and comfort; with warmer (lower) kelvin color temperatures often used to improve relaxation and cooler (higher) kelvin color temperatures used to improve concentration.

When we examine the pattern of the sun through its 24-hour cycle, we understand that the light it emits is more complex than light and dark. The color as well as the intensity of sunlight changes throughout the day.

Warm red and amber light at sunrise slowly changes into a cooler, brighter light during the day, before warming back into amber/red light at sunset. Human vision follows this cycle throughout the day. The eye consists of cells that act as photoreceptors, called rods and cones, which play a vital role. Cones sense changes in color and bright light, while rods sense changes in low light levels. Circadian-friendly lighting respects the body’s natural clock, process and rhythm

When exposed to morning light at a high cooler color temperature, such as the blue and eventually white hue of daylight just after sunrise our bodies instinctively wake up and become alert as the eye sends signals to the brain to trigger the release of hormones such as cortisol, adrenalin and serotonin. Office workers exposed to bright bluish light during the day fall asleep faster at bedtime, enjoy better sleep quality and reported lower levels of stress and depression.

In the early evening the temperature of warm light at sunset triggers the production of melatonin and adenosine; hormones which relax and calm the body, preparing us for restful restorative sleep.

By now, we all know that low access to daylight can be detrimental to our health. Eye strain, exhaustion, and weakening mental health are all issues that share a root cause in poor access to light. This is especially true for shift workers. The implications of access to quality daylight extend beyond wellness and energy savings as they are inextricably linked to increases in productivity by improving and regulating our mental and physical health, our mood, and our concentration and energy levels.

Designing With Circadian Adaptive Lighting

We see a growing awareness of light’s relationship to health across the population. Our body clocks evolved under shifting, changing light from the sun.

Lighting design which is in harmony with one’s circadian rhythms incorporates light fixtures as well as lighting control which emits varying color temperatures depending on the time of day to improve productivity, sleep, moods and overall health.

In addition super-efficient, solid-state LED lighting is not only five times more energy-efficient than conventional lighting; it is also designed to support the aesthetic qualities of lighting as well as the physiological and psychological health and wellness of the home’s occupants and can profoundly improve overall quality of life.
Mimicking the natural shifts in daylight that occur from morning to night, the circadian-friendly lighting design allows occupants to select lighting scenes that complement occupants’ circadian rhythms and support nighttime vision. When evening falls, light suffuses the space with a soft, warm glow; bright enough to relax in after a day at the beach, but soft enough to improve sleep quality by avoiding melatonin suppression. For instance, amber hallway night lights, provide enough light to navigate in darkness without depleting a photopigment in the human eye called rhodopsin that helps humans see in low-light conditions. This allows occupants to move about safely and return to sleep quickly and easily via a comfortable environment that won’t disrupt sleep patterns.

Ketra Offers Highly Accurate Representation Of Natural Light

The human eye has evolved to perceive incredibly subtle changes in the color and intensity of natural light. These light changes set our circadian rhythms and affect everything from our sleep cycles to our heart rate and immune systems. We live in a heavily built environment that deprives us of natural light and our ability to regulate our circadian rhythms.

The lighting we want when it’s bright outside is fundamentally different than what we want when it’s dark outside. Individual KETRA bulbs can be configured to constantly communicate and adjusting to their environment and one another to provide you with a near-perfect representation of natural light at any given moment throughout the day; lighting which can also be set to adapt for the situation as well as the time of day.

Ketra was acquired by the lighting controls company Lutron. Its products can now be operated by Lutron, Crestron, Amazon Alexa and Google Home lighting controls in addition to Ketra’s own controls and mobile applications with prices from about $5 to $15 per square foot.

Ketras proprietary control chip is unique in its ability to provide full-spectrum, saturated color, pastel lighting and 90+ CRI white light in one lamp. It also checks and holds color stability and matching and has a thermal feedback loop to diminish heat gain in canister lighting.

Ketra bulbs have red, green, blue and white LEDs inside, as well as sensors that monitor and adjust them to achieve desired light levels and colors throughout the day. Color temperatures range from about 1,400 to 10,000 kelvin. (For comparison, the color temperature of candlelight is below 2,000 kelvin, traditional incandescent bulbs are roughly 2,700 to 3,000, and natural daylight can be well over 5,000.)

Crestron SolarSync™ Outdoor Daylight and Color Temperature Sensor

SolarSync revolutionizes circadian lighting control. Traditional tunable white and circadian lighting solutions utilize astronomical time clock and manual user controls. manual control often has limitations

The SolarSync sensor was designed to analyze the color temperature of the ambient light and direct the indoor lighting to automatically match the detected color when mounted outdoors or in an area exposed to plenty of natural light. This innovative sensor can drive indoor lighting to match the color and intensity of the sunlight throughout the day with correlated color temperature (CCT) technology and a luminous intensity meter (lux) to measure the exact color temperature and luminosity of ambient sunlight. A Crestron lighting control system then syncs the indoor lighting fixtures to the CCT and lux values recorded by the sensor, mirroring the natural daylight. It can also create artistic lighting scenes that make midnight feel like a sunny afternoon. SolarSync also inclement weather as well as has manual mode settings to maximize the best lighting effect at all times with no effort.

Big Sky®, Biodynamic Premium Natural Lighting

Big Sky®, biodynamic and Premium lighting, has been designed to diffuse the light as close as possible to that of the day (IRC, Color Rendering Index, between 94 and 98/100). Big Sky respects natural circadian rhythm and reproduces, the view of the sky that evolves throughout the day. Controlling Big Sky is simple and seamless. It can be integrated with any building automation or lighting control system, or alternatively on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky Player application (IOS or Android), Bluetooth or DALI.

Big Sky’s Largest Screen the Limitless is a revolutionary way of bringing natural light to indoor spaces.  If you are an Interior Designer or Architect Big Sky® Lighting brings unlimited design options for both home and business applications.