Workers exposed to daylight have better quality of life

A new study has demonstrated a strong relationship between workplace daylight exposure and office workers' sleep, activity and quality of life.

Compared to workers in offices without windows, those with windows in the workplace received 173 percent more white light exposure during work hours and slept an average of 46 minutes more per night.

There also was a trend for workers in offices with windows to have more physical activity than those without windows.

Workers without windows reported poorer scores than their counterparts on quality of life measures related to physical problems and vitality, as well as poorer outcomes on measures of overall sleep quality, sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances and daytime dysfunction.

"The extent to which daylight exposure impacts office workers is remarkable," study co-author Ivy Cheung, a doctoral candidate in the Interdepartmental Neuroscience program at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois said.

According to the authors, the architectural design of office environments should take into consideration how natural daylight exposure may contribute to employee wellness.

"Day-shift office workers' quality of life and sleep may be improved via emphasis on light exposure and lighting levels in current offices as well as in the design of future offices," Cheung said.

The research is published in an online supplement of the journal SLEEP.