February 2018

Bathe yourself in perfect illumination

Now you no longer have to choose between cosy and practical bathroom lighting. You can have both.

In winter-dark Scandinavia, light and especially lighting has always played a vital role. It makes all the difference in the world when the task light resembles daylight, and when the lighting in the snug corners is designed to create perfect cosiness for long, dark winter evenings. However, light is not only about sight and atmosphere – light influences the brain very much and can be crucial to both your mood and your sleep.  

For years, researchers and designers alike have been working on ensuring proper lighting in all the rooms of the home, but the bathroom and its special challenges have never received much attention. How do you create the perfect lighting in a room where the needs can change significantly from one moment to the next, and the possibilities are also limited by safety considerations related to moisture?

Your clothes do not match if…

For the past few years, Dansani has been one of the Danish design companies to pick up the gauntlet of trying to create perfect bathroom lighting. 

- The biggest challenge is the fact that our needs are extremely varied when we are in the bathroom. Before we go to bed, we need warm, subdued lighting that does not ruin the natural production of sleep hormones in our brain. We appreciate the same thing when we have just woken up. But when we want to put on make-up, shave or make sure that our clothes match, we need lighting that resembles daylight as much as possible, says Rasmus Kjær, development manager at Dansani.

So, if you have ever had the experience of leaving home and realising that you are wearing too much make-up or that the colour shades of your clothes do not match – even though you looked great at home – it is usually because your bathroom lighting is too yellow-warm and does not resemble daylight.

Your are missing match the details if…

If you realise that you are missing something in the mirror, your bathroom probably has insufficient ambient lighting.

Rasmus Kjær continues: - Ambient lighting is very important to the eye. You might have a well-lit mirror but that is not enough. On the contrary, it is very important that the area around the mirror is also sufficient illuminated because if not, your pupils have to constantly contract and dilate. That is very hard work for the eye and it prevents you from seeing small details. This is why the entire room has to be illuminated properly.

The biggest challenge

Dansani has developed a range of solutions that cover all the bathroom areas, including daylight-like lighting by the mirror and comfortable ambient lighting in the room for indirect lighting in cabinets and drawers. Although LED technology has multiplied the possibilities, Rasmus Kjær and his colleagues are still facing one serious challenge:

- We have invested a lot of hours in examining and discussing the kind of intensity and colour tone to use for the lighting. No matter which solution we came up with, it was always a compromise in terms of fulfilling all the different needs in the bathroom. At the same time, people have various preferences, so we had to develop various products in order to cater for these differences.

Now,you just have to touch the button… 

Still, the fast-growing LED technology turned out to offer a solution for this issue too. Now, Dansani lets the customers manage the lighting by choosing not only the intensity but also the colour tones warm or cold.

Rasmus Kjær explains: - Both the LED technology and its management have turned so advanced that you can now select lighting intensity and colour very accurately. This means that you can take a bath by candlelight and then put on your make-up in clear daylight. All you have to do is press a button.