Lighting Needs A Wellness Category

Lighting standards are changing, and not in a way that supports human health. The Design Lights Consortium (DLC) has proposed new technical requirements for LED lighting that prioritize energy efficiency measured in lumens per watt. While energy savings matter, this approach ignores a very critical factor: light’s impact on human health.

As Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, Director of the Circadian Light Research Center, explains, lighting standards today are based on a 100-year-old definition of brightness, not considering health. That’s like creating a diet plan based only on calories, without considering essential nutrients.

A growing coalition of doctors, scientists, and wellness lighting manufacturers, including Dr. Michael Breus (The Sleep Doctor) and Norb Lighting founder Dave MacKenzie, are petitioning for the creation of a General Wellness Lighting category.

The Problem: Brightness vs. Health

The DLC’s proposed standards measure efficiency based on lumens per watt: a metric derived from the 1924 V luminosity function (a metric that prioritizes how bright light looks to the human eye, rather than its overall effect on health or biology). This metric is heavily weighted toward green and yellow wavelengths because they appear brightest to the human eye. But brightness is not the same as health.

Here’s the issue:

• Healthy light includes a broad spectrum of visible and invisible wavelengths, including blue light for circadian rhythm and near-infrared (NIR) for mitochondrial health.
• The proposed rules favor lights that emit mostly green and yellow wavelengths, while omitting health-critical wavelengths like violet, red, and NIR.

As the petition states, “just like a balanced food diet, the light diet people consume deserves attention and regulatory consideration.”

Why Healthy Lighting Matters More Than Ever

Most Americans now spend 95% of their time indoors under artificial light that fails to replicate the full spectrum of natural sunlight (Moore-Ede). This change in lifestyle has major health consequences:

• Circadian Disruption: Blue-rich light at night disrupts our biological clocks, increasing risks for insomnia, obesity, diabetes, depression, and even cancer (Stevens and Zhu).
• Loss of Near-Infrared: NIR, present in sunlight and incandescent bulbs, supports cellular energy and mitochondrial function. Standard LEDs completely eliminate NIR (Hamblin).

The World Health Organization classified night-shift work involving circadian disruption as a probable carcinogen in 2007 (Stevens et al.). Since then, over 10,000 studies have linked improper light exposure to chronic disease.

What Is Wellness Lighting?

Wellness lighting is designed to support human health, not just visible brightness. At Norb Lighting, we like to call this “light nutrition”. Examples include:

• Full-spectrum lights that mimic daylight
• Circadian-friendly lights for day and night
• No-blue lights at night
• Lights with added NIR for mitochondrial health

These lights will not meet proposed DLC standards because they prioritize health over maximizing lumens.

The Solution: A New Product Class

The coalition has petitioned the Department of Energy and DLC to create a new class of General Wellness Lighting Fixtures and Lamps with its own efficiency standards. This category would allow manufacturers to design lights that provide both illumination and health benefits.

If this change does not happen, the 2024 DOE rule (125 lumens per watt) will phase out nearly all lights that support circadian health and NIR exposure by 2028. That means Americans will be left with narrow-spectrum LEDs that harm sleep, circadian rhythms, and overall health. 

Light is more than brightness, it is essential for well-being. As the petition warns:

“If DLC fails to provide the proposed new product class, it will set in motion an unprecedented public health experiment on over 330 million unwilling Americans who would be deprived of healthy lighting fixtures and lamps… Creating a new product class that provides healthy energy-efficient lighting is likely to save energy and improve health.”

Norb Lighting stands with health-conscious consumers and experts advocating for lighting that supports human wellness. If you want to bring wellness lighting into your home, explore our NorbSMILE Full Spectrum Bulbs for natural daylight indoors and NorbSLEEP Bulbs for circadian-friendly evenings. Or NorbSMART, an app-controlled bulb that can transition from daytime to evening spectrum based upon settings that you choose. 

Citations

• Hamblin, Michael R. Photobiomodulation in the Brain: Low-Level Laser (Light) Therapy in Neurology and Neuroscience. Academic Press, 2019.
• Moore-Ede, Martin, et al. “Petition to the U.S. Department of Energy to Create a New Product Class for General Wellness Light Bulbs.” Circadian Light Research Center, 2024.
• Stevens, Richard G., et al. “Carcinogenicity of Shift-Work, Light at Night, and Circadian Disruption.” World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, 2007.
• Stevens, Richard G., and Yvonne Zhu. “Electric Light, Particularly at Night, Disrupts Human Circadian Rhythms: Is That a Problem?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 370, no. 1667, 2015, pp. 20140120.