What Are We Missing When We Talk About Healthy Buildings?

The discussion covered a wide range of topics, from fuel poverty, housing quality and ventilation through to healthy ageing, implementation challenges and health inequalities.

One theme came through particularly strongly: if we want healthier homes and buildings, focusing on a single factor will not be enough.

Physical health, mental wellbeing and social wellbeing are all interconnected. The challenge is not simply identifying individual issues, but understanding how they interact and how we can create environments that help people live well throughout their lives.

Representing The Lighting Industry Association (The LIA), Dr Jemima Unwin Teji explored a question that sits alongside these wider conversations:

Should healthy buildings be judged not only by the harms they prevent, but also by the outcomes they enable?

The message was simple.

Light, both daylight and electric light, is often overlooked in discussions about healthy buildings, despite growing evidence linking it to sleep, recovery, falls prevention, learning, independence and wellbeing.

The lighting industry is not suggesting that light is the answer to every challenge. Rather, it should be considered as part of a broader, evidence-led approach to creating healthier environments.

The discussion also prompted important reflections on ageing populations, health inequalities and whether current approaches sometimes focus more heavily on energy performance than on wider human outcomes.

One observation that particularly resonated with Ayça was the idea that technologies and interventions should increasingly be judged by the outcomes they deliver for people, rather than considered in isolation.

As an industry, there is more work to do to help policymakers, building professionals and the public understand the relationship between light, health and wellbeing.

After all, most people understand that diet affects health. Most people understand that exercise affects health. Far fewer people understand that light affects health.

A huge thank you to Neil McLean, Roger Sexton, Dr Shelley James – The Light Lady, Ann Marie Aguilar, Ulysse Dormoy and colleagues from across the healthy homes and buildings community for contributing to such a thoughtful and important discussion.

We were also pleased to share our policy briefing, “Healthy Buildings Need Healthy Light”, which argues that healthy buildings should be judged not only by the harms they prevent, but by the lives they help people live.

If you would like a copy of the briefing, please feel free to send Ayça an email at aycad@thelia.org.uk.