The Sunday Times (Interiors)
November 2004

See the light
Technology can bring natural brightness to even the darkest of rooms, discovers Eleanor Flegg

There’s a miracle supplement that can improve our lives enormously if we get extra doses of it. We are scientifically proven to feel better, work harder and get more out of life with it. Students study more effectively when they absorb more of it, and office workers are absent for fewer days in the year. The wonder ingredient is naturally occurring daylight. The more we get, the better our lives become.

But with many of us living in dark apartments and semis, it seems designers have only recently rediscovered this. Now there’s a new movement afoot — “daylighting”, which uses new technology to change the way buildings are constructed and designed. Daylight can now even be piped into our windowless basements, using uncomplicated, relatively inexpensive techniques.

When Jan and Oisin Humphreys moved back from Australia in 1996 they saw a niche in the Irish market for innovative daylighting solutions and started up their Kinsale-based company Prismatics.

One of its products, Skytubes, uses reflective tubing to channel daylight from the roof into the rooms below. Highly polished on the inside, the silver-laminated aluminium tubes are about 24cm in diameter. One end opens onto the roof, the other appears as a small, round frosted lens on the ceiling of the room where extra light is required. Skytubes are simple to fit and don’t require structural changes.

Costs vary according to the length of the tube, but a typical 7ft 6in tube costs €520, including Vat and installation. The tubes can go under floors and around corners, although the light output is reduced as the tube gets longer and you lose light with every “bounce”.

“Intelligent” lighting systems are beyond the scope of most home budgets. “Weird and wonderful solutions tend to be quite tricky to achieve,” says Humphreys. “We keep it as simple as possible, and once the tube is installed, the daylight is free.”

The disadvantage, especially in overcast Ireland, is that the daylight itself isn’t always dependable, only now we can supplement it to remove the “coldness” from the blue/grey light of winter.

Marc O’Riain of Rorsa Interior uses recessed fluorescent daylight tubing to supplement natural light. “Daylight does make a place feel colder — whether it’s natural daylight or daylight bulbs — because of the blue quality of the light,” he says. “You need to balance it by using warm colours in the interior. An average house would cost €800, depending on the insulation it has.”

Another interesting product, the Lightile, will go on sale in Ireland soon but is presently available only online and by mail order from the UK. Lightiles come different shapes and sizes, and resemble roof tiles but are made of polycarbonate and have a mirror attached to the back to channel in more light. A diffuser, a dimpled lens, then spreads the light, which can be conducted through the ceiling with an extension duct to the room below. The kits cost between £90 (€128) and £165 (€235) exclusive of Vat and delivery.

Even an overcast sky can provide plenty of light — think of it as a giant lampshade, diffusing the light and taking the edge off the glare. “Most of the light in a room comes from the top of the window,” says the Dublin-based architect Robin Mandal. “Anything below eye level doesn’t really count. Wide, panoramic windows may be good for the view, but when it comes to light, height matters. You need to get as much of the sky as possible.”

This is why a few carefully placed rooflights will bring more light into a room than those huge, low picture windows favoured in many homes.

Clerestory windows — a row of small windows near the top of a wall — catch the light from the sky and produce a natural glow on the ceiling. It also helps to clear dressings from the top half of the window. Roman blinds tend to bunch at the top, absorbing precious light, while pelmets and curtains have the same effect. If glare is a problem and you find you need to close the blinds in order to see what you’re doing, there are myriad anti-glare solutions which don’t significantly reduce light levels. One such product is the Guthrie Douglas Silver Shading Solution from Acme Blinds. The see-through blind reduces glare but you still have the view. This costs about €143 for 4ft square.

If you are planning to build or extend, choose an architect with a reputation for being good with light. “Light fascinates us,” says Gary Mongey of Box Architects. “It’s the only moving element in architecture. In one project we put rooflights over the bath, bed, and wardrobe so the owner could see the sky or the stars as they moved.”

Acme blinds, 021 4502 358, www.acmeblinds.ie
Box Architecture, 01 4737 106, www.box.ie
Lightile, www.lightile.com
Rorsa Interior, 021 436 2922
Prismatics, 021 477 3157, www.prismatics.net
Robin Mandal Architects, 01 278 6188

www.box.ie