Here at Southern Lighting, we have long championed the sentiment that everyone deserves good lighting!
Designing spaces with budgets rather than people as the core focus, can seriously impact the wellness of our built environments. With this in mind, we applaud the Hobart Women’s Shelter, Emily Taylor, Christopher Clinton, and everyone else behind the scenes, who brought these first two homes to life! Based on discussions with women and children with lived experience of violence and/or homelessness and incorporating trauma-informed design principles and careful consideration of the end user at every step of the design process, a vision of what social and affordable housing should look like in this country has been realised.
The lighting needed to work in cohesion with the overall design principles;
Warm Lighting. Most of our time spent in our homes is of an evening. Cool white lighting at night can disrupt our Circadian Rhythm, negatively impacting our health, and can feel harsh and uninviting.
Peripheral Brightness. We ensured that lighting highlighted the peripherals of external and internal spaces. Being able to see our surroundings makes us feel safe.
Flicker Free Drivers. Poor quality drivers can cause an invisible flicker that our brain can still recognise. This flicker can cause headaches and lead to serious health issues. To special needs and hyper-sensitive people, this invisible flicker can actually be visible.
No downlights! Downlights can be glary and deliver a very shadowy type of light- these homes have diffused, ambient lighting solutions which are more uniform and visually comfortable as well making the spaces feel larger.
Dimming. As humans, our preferences for light levels are all different, and also change across the day. Having the ability to control our light provides optimum comfort for the user.
Good Colour Rendering. Colour perception plays a strong role in our satisfaction with the built environment.
Less is more. Overall, we reduced the number of light points, understanding that over lighting of living spaces can feed stress and lead to adverse health effects.
As part of our continued commitment to community and social responsibility, we were honoured to be able to donate the complete lighting package to these beautiful homes with some generous support from Unios and ISM Objects.