Design a Better Bedroom with Skylights

by Rachel Lyon, Editorial Director for Direct from the Designers™

If your bedroom seems dreary, stuffy, and/or you have a hard time waking up, you could be missing some key elements for healthful rest. All too often, people focus so much on designing the major shared areas of a home that they overlook just how important it is to have a well-designed bedroom. A mainstay of living room design could even be the solution to common sleep woes—here’s why you should consider adding skylights to bedrooms, too!

Natural Light

Skylights brighten space better than windows because the sun shines overhead for most daytime hours, not perpendicular to the walls. Harnessing this free light saves on electricity, but it also can have a direct effect on how well you sleep and how you feel. For many, common problems like insomnia, waking up tired, and brain fog could be mitigated simply by inviting more natural light inside.

Our sleep cycle is tied to the sun; we’re biologically programmed to rise with the light and fall asleep at nightfall. Modern life throws off this circadian rhythm because we spend a lot less time outside and use artificial light at all hours. If you’ve ever gone camping off the grid, you probably noticed how you felt tired and ready for bed in the evening, and how you naturally woke up at dawn. You can reset your circadian rhythm similarly by limiting artificial light—everything from hitting light switches off to not staring at glowing electric screens after dark—and getting more natural light throughout the day, but especially in the morning. Skylights can help with this!

Waking up with natural light is a lot more pleasant than dealing with a jarring alarm. Your body comes out of sleep gently—and with less grogginess—as the sun rises. And in contrast to many windows, the higher placement of skylights affords privacy from neighbors and the street. Including skylights in bedrooms makes as much sense as anywhere else, if not more!

Fresh Air

Most of us spend most of our time inside, and that means we’re constantly exposed to indoor pollution. While impurities can disperse and are moved away with the wind outside, they build up inside our homes. Not only do outdoor pollutants get trapped inside with nowhere to go, but a lot of the things we put in homes—from flooring to paint, and all sorts of furniture and furnishings—off-gas volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for years. If you don’t remove them somehow, that exposure really adds up.

Skylights that open help bring fresh air into the house, which reduces indoor environmental pollutants and can also be used as natural climate control. In turn, your health should benefit! There’s a direct correlation between air pollution and respiratory problems, many of which affect how well you sleep. Even among the most physically fit, polluted air causes people to sleep less soundly than when they have clean air. You’ll see this used in advertising for air filters, but even passively creating airflow through skylights makes a huge difference. Believe it or not, most air handling systems recycle indoor air, so it's a great idea to opt for skylights that can refresh your bedroom simply and efficiently.

Automation

Not sure if you’d be able to use skylights to their fullest potential? Consider a hands-off approach that handles everything for you. With sensors that monitor temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels, VELUX ACTIVE with NETATMO opens and closes electric and solar-powered skylights, and raises and lowers their blinds, to improve indoor conditions. That means you don’t even have to think about what to do to get a better night’s rest!

The system opens skylights three times per day to release warm, stale air, and will add on to that as circumstances demand. Of course, it does so intelligently—it checks local weather forecasts to figure out the best times to operate, and the rain sensor will close skylights at the first hint of precipitation. VELUX ACTIVE aims to optimize the air inside, but it takes special directions, too—you can set your own custom levels to maintain, set your own timers for operation, and control skylights at will through an app, or even through Siri. Designed with health and personalization in mind, this is just what the typical modern consumer needs.

You should prioritize your sleeping space like it has an effect on your waking hours—because it does! Look into adding skylights to bedrooms to promote better rest. VELUX has solutions for all sorts of roofs and ceilings, and their blind shop has blackout and light filtering blinds in all sorts of colors to suit your design. Connect with a local installer to discuss the possibilities for your home!