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

Compared with office workers without windows, those with windows in the workplace received 173% 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 study group consisted of 49 day-shift office workers—27 in windowless workplaces and 22 in workplaces with windows. The research abstract was published recently in an online supplement of the journal Sleep.

  daylighting, sleep research