Welcome to a six post series on the Calm Tech Institute’s certification standards! In today’s post, we’ll focus on light, which is featured in Section 4 of our Calm Tech Certification audit.
I once fell in love with a Dyson vacuum. It had a wonderful design with sleek lines and beautiful shape. It was even nice enough to hang on my wall.
It was only when I went to sleep that night that I realized my new friend had a design flaw. Once the lights were off, I realized that the charging Dyson oozed a bright, blinking BLUE LED light that filled the entire room, loudly announcing its existence and disrupting my slumber.
We’ve been told that technology will help us ease our lives, but as with many devices, this particular vacuum cleaner only does that part of the time. By day, it’s fun to use, quiet, and pretty. It’s just not a great roommate at night. The blinking blue LED is the equivalent of a snoring dog, but far less cuddly.
Though it’s helpful for an appliance to let you know when it’s charging, a smaller orange light would’ve made more sense. The light could change to a dim green when fully charged. This would eliminate the blinking. But because blue LED light is so very pervasive in our devices – for reasons we’ll explore later in this post – let’s look quickly at the science behind its intrusiveness.
Why Certain Light Makes Us Miserable
Understanding the physics of light and how it interacts with the human eye is the first step to understanding why too much of it can be bad for us.
All light is waves, and all colors have different energies. Towards the beginning of the visible spectrum is red light, made up of low energy waves. This light is easier on our eyes, especially at night. As we get closer to the higher energy side of the spectrum, light becomes more tiresome for our eyes to process. Blue light occupies the highest energy portion of the visible spectrum.
Originally, blue LED light was originally the most expensive light LED light to produce — high energy equals more cost per small LED – but it’s still pervasive in tech. Perhaps its very cost made it seem fancy and premium.
Some studies suggest that prolonged exposure to blue light, particularly in high-intensity or artificial sources (like screens and LED lighting), may contribute to retinal stress and digital eye strain. There is also ongoing research about whether it plays a role in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), though the evidence is not conclusive.
Artificial blue light, the kind associated with LED and screen-based OLED illumination, operates on a different level of the spectrum, in the 380–500 nanometer range. High-energy visible light, or HEV–found emitted from laptops, tablets and mobile phones– is in the 415–455 nanometer band. Sunglasses are designed to block some of the light in this range — as are welding helmets! But the tech industry has been slow to adjust. LCD displays are everywhere, as are bright blue indicator lights on home electronics. High energy light like this can disrupt the human sleep cycle.
Another factor, which I once wrote about for FastCo Design, is how blue light has become associated with a “futuristic” look thanks to popular culture:
The fancy color of the future is interrupting our circadian rhythms.
In our Calm Tech Institute certification standards, light is one of the most important categories. We audit not just the quality of light, but the color of light as well. Being mostly well-designed, my Dyson vacuum would pass most of our review, but it would definitely fail on the light category, simply because the product uses a bright blue indicator.
Fortunately, there are two ways Dyson the company could fix this in future models of their vacuum.
Use an orange light to indicate the battery is charging, and make it a bit smaller — so that it doesn't illuminate the whole room.
In addition to using a “quieter” color, don’t make it blink while plugged in. To indicate battery charging is complete, simply change the light color to green when it’s ready for us. Much more intuitive – and easier on the eyes.
If you already own a Dyson vacuum or other device / appliance with a searingly bright light that’s visible to you at night, it’s worth taking the time – and preserving your sleep — to do a simple fix. Amazon sells little filter stickers (link here) to make lights a little less bright, while still allowing you to see the status of the light. An even quicker fix is to cut a bandaid or some adhesive tape into a circle and put it over the light, to knock out some of that brightness — that’s what I finally did to turn my Dyson into a decent roommate.
Read the rest of this series: