Your Office Can Give You Insomnia

If you toss and turn with insomnia night after night, your problem may be the office in which you spend your daylight hours. Office architecture, according to research at Northwestern University in Chicago, can defeat your best efforts at getting a good night’s sleep.

The sleep problem at night starts with a lack of windows during the day. Workers who sit in windowless offices get 173 percent less white light than they’d get in windowed rooms and they sleep, on average, 46 minutes less per night.

“The extent to which daylight exposure impacts office workers is remarkable,” says study co-author Ivy Cheung.

According to the scientists, the architectural design of office environments should take into account the ways in which natural daylight exposure contributes to health.

“Day-shift office workers’ quality of life and sleep may be improved via emphasis on light exposure and lighting levels in current offices as well as in the design of future offices,” says Cheung.