Skylights – An Eco-Friendly Way To Light Up Your Home, and a Hawaii Case Study

Have you ever sat at your cubicle under fluorescent lights and stared at your computer screen for 9 hours in a row, and thought, “I’d love to get the corner office…there’s a window over there.” Well, if you’re like most people, your biological impulse is driving you to seek natural light. It’s unnatural for us to be under artificial lights all day, and to be honest, it’s unhealthy and not very eco-friendly either. Skylights are becoming increasingly common in many offices and homes, bringing free, natural daylight into the living space through space age technology–a tube!

All kidding aside, skylights are not rocket science. They are, effectively, a tube that brings natural light from the sun, through a series of reflective surfaces in a tube, and into a building’s interior. If it’s daytime outside, it’ll be naturally lit inside. Imagine how much money and energy these can save, and then consider just how crazy it is that we spend so much money on lights when…it’s light outside!

Human fascination with sunlight isn’t exactly a new thing. Pick any ancient civilization (Greek, Mayan, Egyptian etc.) they all had a fascination with natural lighting and would often base aspects of their culture around it. Whether it was to tell time using sundials (first used by the Egyptians around 1500BC) or to denote the arrival of the summer and winter solstice (as evidenced by the orientation and design of temples in both the Mayan and Egyptian cultures). Sunlight has been a guiding force for humanity for thousands of years and it doesn’t look like it’s going out of style any time soon.

We who live in Hawaii can now capture this technology, thanks to the folks over at *Hawaii Skylights, to use natural sunlight to illuminate our homes and offices. By employing an innovative design their system can capture light at anytime of day and reflect it back into your home, and as a result they can reduce your lighting costs by as much as 94%!

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking, what happens when the sun sets and their isn’t any more natural light for the skylights to reflect? Well, they’ve thought of that too and the solution is awesome. It doesn’t come with the standard system, but you can opt to have their SunSense Technology installed which will constantly monitor the lighting levels of your room. Once the level of light drops below a certain level the system will turn on a series of LED lights, and voila! You now have environmentally friendly lighting for your living space around the clock. Pretty slick huh? Just check out of the following before and after shot to get an idea of what one of these systems can do for your home:

Seriously, these guys have thought of everything. Not a fan of the look of the skylight pictured above? Well, they’ve got an answer for that too. You can pick from a wide range of covers, and you can even pick different lenses that will soften or brighten the light or even give it a hint of color. Making it easy to install and match with any home interior, and if you want to remodel your home, you can always swap out the lenses and covers to match your new interior.

So what are you waiting for? If you want a more eloquent and environmentally friendly way of lighting your home, than look no further than Hawaii Skylights.

This post was part of a sponsored package, courtesy of Hawaii Skylights.