The Benefits of Natural Lighting to You and Your Home

Double-hung, sliding and casement windows are often used to ventilate the home. By opening your windows, you can let fresh outdoor into your home and vent stale, indoor air out, thus improving indoor air quality. Your windows also provide a great view of the outdoors. Depending on their placement and glass size, you have the opportunity to frame a picturesque view.

One underappreciated benefit of high-quality windows is that they admit abundant natural light into your interior. Sunlight that enters your home  gives your living space a boost of vitality and freshness. In addition, it can even provide health benefits for you and your family.

Renewal by Andersen® of Eastern NY, your trusted window replacement contractor, discusses the concept of daylighting and how our windows can help with that.

Daylighting as a Design Element

The term daylighting pertains to an architectural concept in which  natural light is taken advantage of in a home or commercial property to brighten the interior. Windows, glass doors and skylights should be installed in strategic places to maximize daylighting.

Proper daylighting provides many benefits. It can make your living space more pleasant aesthetically, while also improving indoor comfort and helping reduce your energy consumption by minimizing your reliance on artificial lighting With these things in mind, it is important that you consider energy saving windows.

Energy-Efficient Windows and Their Role in Daylighting

Letting natural light into your home without experiencing problems with indoor comfort and energy consumption is possible with high-performance windows. Ideally, your windows should have high R-values, which means they should admit sunlight while ensuring thermal resistance. In other words, they should allow plenty of visible light while blocking the infrared rays that are responsible for heating up your home.

Energy-efficient double-hung, sliding and casement windows from Renewal by Andersen of Eastern NY are equipped with Fibrex® composite framing material. Made from a combination of reclaimed wood fiber and proprietary polymer, Fibrex combines the strength and insulating properties of wood with the low-maintenance qualities of vinyl. Its ability to block thermal transfer is about 700 times better than aluminum window frames.

Further boosting  our windows energy efficiency is the High-Performance™ Low-E4® glass we use. This glass features special coatings to block invisible forms of natural light, including ultraviolet and infrared rays. This means the glass protects your furniture from fading and your home from heating up, while still admitting plenty of natural light. Thanks to our a dual-panel design with insulating spacers, you are sure to achieve indoor comfort and energy savings.

Benefits of Daylighting to Your Health

Pursuing window replacement with us helps you reap the health benefits of natural light. Medical studies have provided interesting insights regarding the correlation between natural light and health, including a finding that natural light helps reduce seasonal dips in mood. In fact, a 2009 study showed that visible-spectrum light therapy has been proven effective in the treatment of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of depression that’s associated with the winter months, where the days are short and exposure to natural light is more limited.

People with SAD tend to feel sluggish and moody. A good way to overcome SAD is to invest in energy saving windows that let natural light in. With well-placed energy-efficient windows, your home will be flooded with natural light, which will help restore your normal circadian rhythm and banish the symptoms of SAD.

Another health benefit of daylighting the home is more absorption of vitamin D. Whenever you expose yourself to sunlight, your skin absorbs this important nutrient. Vitamin D helps strengthen your bones, teeth and muscles and can even reduce your risk of developing heart disease.

The great thing about this so-called “sunshine vitamin” is that it doesn’t matter where you acquire it, whether inside or outside of your home. That’s why taking advantage of natural light is imperative. Tackling window replacement can be a huge help in this regard.

Natural light also improves sleep. In fact, a recent study published in the journal Sleep Health revealed that exposure to more light during the day and less light at night boosts healthy sleep patterns. True enough, sunlight allows for the calibration of the body’s internal “circadian” clock.

The results of the study also suggest that office environments with abundant natural lighting may be beneficial to the health of workers. With energy saving windows that admit plenty of daylight and the right amount of electric lighting, employees may be more productive at work and happier people in general.

Incorporating daylighting into your home can be achieved through the right placement of windows. Your local climate and the orientation of your home relative to the sun also need to be considered. A reliable window contractor like Renewal by Andersen of Eastern NY can help you with all of this.

Our experienced window professionals can help you take advantage of daylighting and all the benefits it provides. We can help you choose the best options from our wide selection of window styles, from sliding windows to casement windows.

Call (866) 479-1700 to discuss your window replacement plans with us. You may also fill out our contact form to request a free in-home consultation.