Improve daylight

Natural light has positive impacts on our health, wellbeing and productivity. Dark rooms tend to make you feel cold, lethargic and uninspired, whereas light-filled spaces are warming and inviting. 5 ways natural light adds value to your home:

Transforms: Alongside its benefits to people in buildings, natural light can transform spaces architecturally by enhancing the design and aesthetics
Brightens: Lively and spacious living spaces have immediate impact and are instantly attractive
Enhances: Daylighting is a design strategy that pays off. It evokes positive emotional responses in people, making properties more attractive, and it has a lasting benefit to buildings
Boosts buyer appeal: Light filled interiors add value to homes. The amount of natural light a home receives can influence its appeal, the length of time it’s on the market and its sale price
Saves: Artificial lighting is responsible for a significant amount of energy consumption and adds to energy bills. Harnessing daylight as much as possible saves on energy bills.

Now you don’t need to be a health or design expert that you can improve daylight factor in your home with our toolkits.

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Toolkits 19

for improving daylight

1. Try to use lighter colors

Light color has good effect of reflection that amplify the inner space. The use of light color in poor illumination space can enhance the brightness of the room

2. Optimizing internal layout

One of the examples is combing balcony and living room.

3. Increase window area

Increase window area, especially floor to ceiling window allows more light into the room.

4. Try to use light and handy furnitures

Bulky furniture will block the visual and light, and give a sense of oppression. Therefore, try to choose slight furnitures which have less space obstruction and more visual permeability.

5. Avoid complex ceilings

For the home which has insufficient floor height or area, avoid complex ceiling to avoid the decrease of floor height, becuase it will block the natural light from window.

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Options

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錨點 1

Option 1.1: choose furnitures with lighter colors

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Description

choose furnitures with lighter colors, and choose furnitures with porcelain or metal material.

Benefits

- lighter color can reflect light effectively than dark color.

Challenges

- A uniform white colour would look monotonous

- easy to get dirty

Impact Level

impact level scale, it mainly shows how much impact of this option to the daylight factor

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- H. Add finfishing touches

Renovation Phase

A. Make a plan

B. Set a budget

C. Hire a contractor

D. Talk to your insurance company

E. Secure permits and order materials

F. Start demolition

G.Work behind the walls

H. Paint and install flooring

I. Install cabinetry

J. Add finishing touches

Option 1.2: Paint the walls and ceiling white

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Description

Paint the walls and ceiling white can make interior space looks clean and bright. The ceiling can be polished or used polished materials that enable it to reflect more light into interior area.

Benefits

- easy to achieve, only take hours to repaint the house

Challenges

- A uniform white colour would look monotonous

- easy to get dirty

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- H. Paint and install flooring

Option 1.3: Chooose lighter colored floor

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Description

A light, textured oak floor will make your home looks more lovely.

Benefits

- Light coloured floors actually look cleaner than dark coloured floors

Challenges

- must be replaced for the whole house

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- H. Paint and install flooring

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Option 2.1: Combining balcony and living room space

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Description

Balcony as the main source of light, remove the partition wall between the balcony and the living room can immediately improve indoor daylight factor.

Benefits

- Improves indoor daylight factor while increasing interior areas, also can makes good use of balcony space.

- It is a cost-effective option for smaller or older houses.

Challenges

- many walls between living room and balcony are load-bearing walls or Shear walls which can't be demolish;

- need to hang clothes in the living room;

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- G. Work behind the walls

Option 2.2: Use half wall or glass wall to separate areas

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Description

Allow spaces to be separated without blocking the light.

Benefits

- allow house owner to divide interior area without taking up space;

- Optimising interior lighting;

- Visually gives the illusion of higher height, especially useful for low floor height homes;

Challenges

- glass wall doesn't work well on soundproof in a certain extent;

- reduce visual privacy of the room;

- There are some risks of smash;

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- H. Paint and install flooring

錨點 2

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Option 3.1: Floor to ceiling window

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Description

Floor to ceiling window allows more light into the room.

Benefits

- More natural light (which means saving more energy)

- More visual access to natural beauty outside

- Improving a small house, making it look more spacious

- Improving a regular house, making it more interesting

Challenges

- Offering less privacy than regular windows;

- Prone to vandalism, such as rock-throwing;

- More expensive in installation, glazing, and special frames;

- More difficult to clean and maintain;

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- G. Work behind the walls

Option 3.2: thinner window frame

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Description

Narrow window frames are becoming increasingly popular with modern home design and window replacement. Narrow frames provide a sleek modern look that appeals to many homeowners.

Benefits

- Natural Light, less frame material means more glass area. The more of your exterior home surface that is made up of glass, the greater the opportunity for natural light to shine through;

- Outdoor View, much like with light above, less frame material means less visual obstruction. Narrow frames allow you to see even more of your scenic surroundings;

- Minimalist Appearance, narrow frames provide a sleek, modern look that draws little attention to the frame and more to the visual accents both inside and outside the windows;

Challenges

- same as floor to ceiling window

- must be based on the sufficient window area

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- G.Work behind the walls

錨點 3

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Option 4.1: Choose furnitures with low height

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Description

In the same space, the lower the furniture, the further it is from the ceiling and creating the illusion of more space, which can reduce the depression caused by the insufficient of natural light.

Benefits

- give a illusion of a larger space.

Challenges

- not very friendly to tall people;

- inconvenient for cleaning the floor;

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- J. Add finishing touches

Option 4.2: Choose furnitures with slender legs

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Description

give a sense of less space obstruction and more visual permeability.

Benefits

- give a sense of less space obstruction and more visual permeability;

Challenges

- Unable to bear greater weight;

- There are some risks of broken;

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- J. Add finishing touches

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Option 5.1: Avoid complex ceilings

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Description

A simple ceiling can make the room looks more neat and tidy.

Benefits

- give a illusion of a larger space.

Challenges

Impact Level

Design Impact

Cost

DIY Level

Structural

Impact

Key design phase

- I. Install cabinetry

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