Red lighting is an indispensable option for a home toilet

About two years ago, during the renovation, I made red lighting in my bathroom. I spotted this feature in a Czech hotel. It helps me get better sleep and feel energized all day. This is how it all began ...

We went on a tourist tour of Europe. Such a tour when you manage to travel half the world in a week. In the first half of the day, under the monotonous hum of the guide, you look out of the bus window at the sculptures and monuments. In the afternoon, you run after a guide around another city, trying not to get lost in the crowd of onlookers from another tourist group. They bring you to the hotel at night just to sleep. Do not have time to tear your eyes in the morning and again monuments, sculptures and a marathon in the next city. After such a vacation, you need to rest at work for another week.

In the Czech city of Brno we are brought to the hotel. The first thing I do is go to the toilet. I flip the switch and a red light comes on. If we discard youth discos and festive illumination, I used to see red lighting only on TV: in Soviet films, when they develop old film, and somewhere in action films, when the hero failed the operation, and red lights flashed to the sounds of sirens. Therefore, I was slightly surprised by the red lighting in the bathroom.

The first thought: "This is probably so that drug addicts do not go to the toilets." This version had to be checked immediately. I raise my hand, look at the inside of the elbow - the veins are visible even better than in daylight. Then I remember that in restaurants, blue bulbs save themselves from drug addicts. Veins are not visible in blue light.

In the morning I asked the hostess at the reception about the lighting (it's good that the older generation of Czechs knows Russian). “We take care of the guests, so that when you visit the toilet at night, your eyes are not irritated, and you can sleep better,” they answered me. Breaking the pattern. I used to be told that red is annoying and attracts attention. That is why it is so often used in advertising.

Perhaps a year has passed since this trip - I come across Sean Stevenson's book "Healthy Sleep". The author talks about how to sleep in order to get enough sleep. Refers to tests, research, experiments from leading medical and scientific organizations. It was only after reading that I finally understood why the Czech hotel had red lighting.

It turns out that blue light suppresses the production of melatonin at night and causes disruptions in the normal sleep cycle. By the way, the blue spectrum of light is emitted by a monitor, TV, smartphone and partly even an ordinary light bulb.

Harvard scientists (and who else will do this) compared the effects of blue and green light on the human body. Research has shown that blue light suppresses melatonin production twice as much and shifts circadian rhythms twice as much as green light. The degree of influence of light on a person's sleep depends on the wavelength (its location in the spectrum). Accordingly, red light has the least effect on the human body.

During the renovation, I went to the store and came across a multi-mode LED lamp. It even comes with a remote control (24 buttons). There is something to have fun sitting on the toilet - you can arrange a disco. The main light is white. But if you flip the switch again, red lights up (even without the remote control). I use this mode as a night mode.

Having exploited such lighting, I can say for sure that it was not in vain that Harvard was engaged in their research. With white light, a night trip to the toilet ended with the fact that you wake up completely and then you can wallow for an hour to fall asleep again. The red light does not press on the eyes at all. You can go to the toilet on autopilot and sleep again like a baby in a minute.