I worked with a woman with SAD. I helped her paint all of her walls in her new house bright white. I've taken a cue. I have embraced white but not such a stark version. Pale cream with coconut trim.

Eileen

John, It's impressive to me that you have taken on this self-help project. Kudos, and I hope it works wonders for you.

I love the "art." Great stuff! And that's a great chair. When I worked at Robert Mondavi the years before it was sold I had an Aeron chair in my work station. Everyone had one. I loved it. I need one here at home. Best chair ever.

When I had my roof replaced I added several tubular skylights to let light into my interior hallway and in my north facing living room. They made so much difference for me without adding to the electric bill. I'll have to consider some vitamin D.

Each year I count the days until the winter solstice as the daylight hours diminish until they will once again grow longer. I am loving the slightly longer days right now when I can take a bike ride at 4 and still arrive home before the sun is completely gone.

Eileen

I don't seem to have any issues and the weather never keeps me indoors. I go out to play with the dog, walk to the store, feed the cattle, treat the horses, shovel the driveway, then come in and look at seed catalogs, LOL.

The only time I get at all disgusted is about the end of February. One year we had 24 consecutive days with zero sunshine and eventually I get crabby, it's just too ugly. Doesn't keep me inside, though and then I see the buckets come out for maple tapping and I'm fine again. I actually enjoy the seasons' changing, although I hate summer and autumn is actually my favorite time of year.

Annie

I read your post with great interest, John. I have two family members that I'm slowly coming to the conclusion experience SAD -- not to the point of complete debilitation, but rather days in the winter are more difficult and, well, colored "grey" (like a lot of Pittsburgh days) glass half-empty.

Your office looks cheerful and a place that would engender energy. Can I say optimism?

I'm tentatively looking at some sad light therapy lamps. Some are not too exorbitant. One is portable and may work for my college student.

Once again, really exceptional job on the twofold improvements.

Cathy in SWPA

About light - after working at home for many years and then returning to an office I found that the fluorescent lighting gave me headaches. I used a small incandescent task lamp at my desk and that solved the problem.

Eileen

John, I just want, in my study, the computer monitor set up you have! I've missed it...if you've ever said what you do for a living, but I would love to have a daisy chain set up of several monitors for concurrent working!

I changed a lot of our house light bulbs to the daylight bulbs. The others seemed so dark to me once I started using the daylight bulbs. I like how they make the room feel like daytime.

I bought this for my mom two years ago. She had been through depression for a couple of years. We sent her to sunny-climate trips to see relatives, made sure she got outdoors for a walk every day and took Vitamin D supplements. She was medicated and was like a zombie. She quit the meds and is fine today. But we still need to remind her to go outside to soak up some sun.

I just put three skylights in my house during a remodel. My home windows face northeast and, while there is wall of those large windows, none of that light comes in the house. A friend of ours had us look at a site where you can figure out the solar azimuth angle over your home - but it was, uh, geekily complicated, LOL.

There is also a wall of dark paneling that sucks light like a black hole. We saw from a previous home remodel that building a pony wall facing a north-facing window helped to bring light in - the wall bounced light into the room. So we are covering the paneling with drywall.

I went upstairs to the main living area the morning after the skylights were installed and had an O.M.G. moment. It looks like a brand-new house! We had another one put into the new master bath and it is wonderful - we will not have to turn on a light during the day.

I supplement with D and try to get sun when I can. My dog loves to go out on our deck and find that one sliver of sunlight and lay facing the sun for awhile. He must know something.

oh, and you can use mirrors to bounce light into a room as well.

Gina, you can paint paneling a light color and save the expense of putting up drywall.

When I lived in San Francisco, I would leave town for January and February and move to Mexico City for those two months. I did that mainly because I didn't like the cold rain in SF, and I would get sinus infections if I stayed there. Also, the days got very short, and I was not used to that. Since I did freelance work, I could leave whenever I wanted, and business was usually slow after New Years'.

One thing you do with your office is to put up a shelf, perhaps above your computer or a little to the right, and put flowering plants on it. Lots of orchids bloom in the winter, I'll include a photo of one of my cymbidiums that I have moved inside, now that it is blooming. I have ice plants blooming in the front and back yards as well as aloes and other succulents, which I think you can grow indoors with enough light.

I only spent two winters in San Francisco - otherwise Los Angeles is the darkest place I've spent a winter, and it is not dreary here long enough for me to get depressed. I go home for lunch and can sit in my back yard if I want. Getting out of the office at lunch would definitely help, but think about buying some orchids for your office. The flowers last for a long time, and a lot of them will grow well indoors, especially phaelaenopsis, which do not do well in cold weather but can handle low light conditions. Cymbidium are more prolific bloomers but need more light and grow well outdoors, as long as they are not subjected to frost.

Lars

That's a gorgeous cymbidium Lars. I suspect John doesn't get enough light in that room for any flowering plants?

Too late, drywall is already up - we're testing paint samples now. The previous owner had drywalled over the same paneling in the bedroom, which my neighbor told me was done, and I saw when I took out a wall sconce. I saw that it didn't take much room. I was going to tear out the paneling but the thin drywall and availability of a good contractor changed my mind. And painting over it was not the look I wanted.

I wonder if I can get Vitamin D going from light coming in through a closed skylight? LOL.

John, love the colors on that vintage Tour de France poster.

The idea of plants and flowers is intriguing. I've never done much with indoor plants, but do attempt a vegetable garden each year and have managed to not-kill a few outdoor bonsai. My office faces east so it doesn't get much sun, except early on non-cloudy mornings. However, I could replace the tubes in the ceiling fixtures with full-spectrum or grow lights.

dcarch advised me about using lights to lift mood. He suggested that you don't need a special therapeutic "S.A.D. lamp", that bright "daylight" bulbs would work, and that was backed up by some reading I did. My light setup has cost just $90 for bulbs and fixtures, and is brighter than any special lamp would be for 2X the cost.

February-March is the worst time in Portland, in my opinion. By then winter has dragged on for three or four months, but it still has two or three more to go. The sparkle and bustle of the holidays is over. We've usually had at least one stretch of thirty consecutive rainy days without a break.

gina or Eileen, do you have pictures of your newly sunlit spaces? I think the ideas of light tubes and painting walls are great, for a home. If necessary, I can probably paint my office, but I'd prefer not to mess with the red tape involved.

You can never have enough monitors! The Mac mini in our kitchen at home drives dual screens. On my work set-up, the monitor farthest to the right is used for non-work, time wasting productivity killers like - well, like Cooking Forum. When I took the picture, I was apparently not wasting time.

John, I am not sure the lights you have bought will give you the intensity in output to make a significant difference.

The so called 100 watt equivalent CFL bulbs give you only about 1,600 lumens each. Just for comparison my 400 watt metal halide grow lamp puts out 32,000 lumens. Take a look at these bulbs, they are much brighter:

http://www.amazon.com/CowboyStudio-105-Fluorescent-Daylight-Photography/dp/B004L75BGQ/ref=sr_1_17?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1360072582&sr=1-17&keywords=daylight+cfl+bulb

http://www.amazon.com/CowboyStudio-105-Fluorescent-Daylight-Photography/dp/B004L75BGQ/ref=sr_1_5?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1360072904&sr=1-5&keywords=daylight+cfl+bulb+studio

IMHO, multiple lamps are not ideal. It gives too many sources of glare to the eyes. I think a bounced even all around ambient bright illumination feels the best. I believe humans react to light more than just visually by eyes. That's why blind people can also have SAD problems.

Also, a blue incandescent light does not give more blue light than a regular white incandescent light.

You may also look into getting a dust/dawn light to wake you up in the morning, and to put you to sleep at night.

Looking at the picture of your office, I have a few suggestions:

1. Have your monitors oriented away from the window. Your pupil react to bright window light and contracts, making it a strain to view the text on the monitors. So you compensate by turning the screens to their brightest, but that create another problem to the eyes when it gets dark outside. In addition, for visitors to your office, the displays on the screens can be a distraction. I don�t know in your line of work whether it is important to provide privacy to the materials displayed. For some businesses that is a legal requirement.
Do you have glass wall/door to your office? I noticed that you hang your coat on the chair, and not on the coat hook behind the door.

2. I am sure you have tried to set up your monitors most comfortable to your own preference. To me, it seems the monitors should be about 3" lower. I think that would be more ergonomic. Also, if you stack the monitors there will be less neck issues. Most multi-monitor traders have there monitors stacked (see link below).

Where you spend the most time, everything contributes to your general well being.

Gina, "--A friend of ours had us look at a site where you can figure out the solar azimuth angle over your home - but it was, uh, geekily complicated, LOL.�"

It can be complicated to figure out the angle of the sun based on the time of day, the day of the month, the month of the year and your geographic longitude and latitude.

Solar panels are coming down in price quickly, in anticipation of using solar energy, I have designed and built an instrument known as Heliodon, which can give the angle of the sun based on many criteria in seconds without doing any figuring. It can also be very useful in building a house to optimize orientation, window locations, and placement of gardens.

dcarch

My Heliodon
{{gwi:1443434}}


{{gwi:1443435}}

Here is a link that might be useful:

"It can be complicated to figure out the angle of the sun based on the time of day, the day of the month, the month of the year and your geographic longitude and latitude." - YES, exactly what I mean by complicated and well, geeky.

My friend who sent me to find the solar azimuth had built his house and used the web site, which I believe was from NASA or national weather service or some other governmental science agency. He could have used that heliodon. And he would have totally been into it! Before breaking ground he used to go sit in a folding chair on the lot and just sit and sit, thinking about the floorplan. He did that for months.

My house is already built so I put one skylight on either side of the main beam running through the middle of the mid-century mod post-and-beam roof. One side facing east and the other west. Worked out beautifully.

John, I can email you a photo in the next couple of days.

After looking at your office picture more closely, I decided that there is too much yellow and a bit too much orange in the picture, and yellow can have a depressing effect. The poster you chose will help a bit (mostly from the green), but what I think the room needs is a splash of red, perhaps as in these posters:

I did a design for an office in Milan as part of a school project, and I included some furniture with a red line in it (mostly black) and an abstract painting that was almost all red. I like red only in small amounts, but it does a lot to warm up a room. When I tiled my mother's bathroom, I used mostly white and black tiles, but I gave the tiled areas a red border. I also included a couple of Japanese masks like this one:

Lars

Hey gina_w! I can't email you through GW or, apparently, through your blog. So here is my email.

My GW username

Earthlink

The usual punctuation

Net

John,

I was seriously deficient in vitD and more than capsules, the vitD drops really help to improve levels. I got the carlsen which is 4000IU in a single drop. It is predominantly coconut oil and has no taste.

My friend in Hillsboro said light behind the knees and doing yoga regularly really helped.

Sorry, just emailed you two pix. Blog is being re-created or scrapped! Turned on the GW email again.