Niko Gentile

What does daylight mean to you?

“Go out and get some light” my parents said, when I was a teenager with way too much interest in programming. “A luminous apartment with west facing balcony” claims the estate agent to justify the higher market price. “The CIE standard illuminant daylight D is the reference source for color rendering” says the lighting scientist, implying that only daylight renders color perfectly, and anything else can just do worse. “We come from the long night, and we want light for everybody” said a song, associating daylight to hope. We have a craving for daylight in so many aspects of our lives that daylight means to me simply what I want, what everybody wants.

How did your interest in the subject rise?

Few years back I got the results of saliva cortisol concentration for a study on high school students and lighting. I noticed an astonishing peak in secretion for some students during a dark day of the Swedish winter. I could not explain that, then I carefully checked their daily schedule. It comes out that these students had a five-minute walk from another building before doing the test. These five minutes in daylight were enough to boost their cortisol much more effectively than any electric lighting installation, and despite being one of the darkest days of the whole year. In that moment I understood that yes, daylight does make a difference and that we must strive for more daylight for better lives.