We are emerging from a “clinical dark age”, where hospital lighting — often harsh, artificial, monotone, overhead, sometimes absent — is at odds with medical aims, affecting sleep, wellbeing, diurnal rhythms, recovery, and adding to stress, disorientation, and lethargy.
In collaboration with clinicians, we are developing approaches fusing lighting technologies with artistic forms including animation, digital interactivity, illustration, sculpture. These new “lightworks” restore a sense of diurnal orientation and improve sleep, recovery, and mood. Fusing with animation and coding, programmed lightworks provide a narrative journey of movements, subtle fades and complex hues, which mimic nature and help to reduce anxiety, providing a mesmerising point of focus in otherwise monotonous, unchanging surroundings.
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At Evelina Hospital Children’s Hospital we used this approach to create floor-to-ceiling illustrated Corian light walls. Day to night lights glow gently, cycling through a range of colours, aiding sleep patterns and acting as a comforting presence in times of distress.
Colour combinations are used to invoke first a sun, then a hill, then a moon. Another lightwork depicts a sun changing colour as it slowly rises and sets over the day, acting like an illustrative clock to bring temporal orientation for fatigued, disorientated patients. Every hour, the relaxing lightworks momentarily switch to a bright fast and vibrant display of dancing colours, acting as “beacons of play”, to entice children from bed — helping to tackle lethargy and improve physical recovery times.
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We also installed Bodypaint, an ambitious digital light installation by Memo Akten, which uses abstract colours and shapes to dance on the wall, transforming and shifting in response to patients body movements.
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“Before the refurb there used to be an old TV which no one watched. Since the introduction of Bodypaint, children move around and dance and create this beautiful sequence of colours on the walls. The whole waiting room is calmer.”
Dr John Criddle
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Patients travel 6 floors underground to receive Proton beam cancer therapy UCLH’s new facility — a daunting prospect akin to entering a daylight-deprived bunker.
We integrated a bespoke lightwork with decorated resin panels, giving the effect of dappled light breaking through tree-like timber vertical beams, which encircle the seating area as if a clearing in a glade. The lightwork shows a vista of landscape, featuring a rising/setting sun and foliage providing a constantly refreshing scene to bring reassurance, diurnal orientation, and meditative calm for patients waiting for treatment. Clinicians use this piece as a focus for mindfulness practice for patients, helping lower anxiety, and thereby improving procedures, as de-stressed patients fidget less.
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At Southampton ICU we’ve coordinated several approaches together for a new but daylight-deprived ICU. “Exposure to natural daylight is the single most important factor in countering post-anaesthetic delirium in ICU” Max Jonas, Clinical Lead. Hanging sculpture, translucent vinyls, backlit corian, spotlights, and a moving image piece bring a blend of natural, ambient, and generated light.
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We have so far discovered that:
- Lightworks bring both emotional and functional benefits: better sleep, faster recovery, calmer patients and smoother diagnostics
- They establish slower-paced stimulation which reduces brain-chatter, helping to put patients into mindful, calm states
- Better than TVs, they provide a planned, captivating sensory journey that reduces anxiety and adrenalin, rather than spiking it (as TVs do)
- Programming can be tweaked with feedback from patients and clinicians, enabling us to use fresh approaches, and keep incorporating best practise and new findings.
- Lightworks appeal across age and ability ranges; for example, Bodypaint is enjoyed by everyone from autistic children to older adult carers, and it can be played with from a wheelchair using just one finger, or alternatively, the whole body.
- Corian materials and LEDs mean these are eco friendly solutions. When combined with re-programmable software meaning they continue to be adaptable in the future, the financial and carbon costs are extremely low.
- We’re looking forward to developing these approaches further and learning more, so watch this space, and get in touch if you have ideas about how we might use lightworks to help you.
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