An Investigation of Lighting Levels and Sleep Quality

Abstract

Sleep quality in young adults is compromised. Instead of the recommended 7 hours, young adults’ schedule interruptions disturb sleep to a typical six and a half hours, with common disturbances in falling asleep and staying asleep. Recent literature has identified an association between academic performance, negative mood state and low activity level in young adults with sleep disturbances. Young adulthood is a time for the installation of sleep health. Both individual and schedule impositions to the young adults’ sleep schedule are to be modified to obtain Sleep Health. Recent research has identified daytime light effects on sleep such as blue light from electronics as alerting and low level light for relaxation. The aim of this study was to identify sleep quality effects with varying light exposures. It was hypothesized that bright (>450 lux) light conditions would be considered focusing and low light (<220 lux) would be considered calming. We hypothesized that sleep quality would improve by 5% with the introduction of a calm light condition. Undergraduates from a small midwestern university were invited to participate in the study in exchange for a gift card. Six participants completed the study, two males, four females all between 21 - 24 years old. Both hypotheses were supported by qualitative analysis.