I'm quite the opposite: the more light, the better I am (especially now in the northern hemisphere December!). After painting my office walls with a reflective white and putting additional lamps on it, my productivity increased significantly (because the depression I felt inside the office went mostly away!).
In fact, my whole house has this problem: lots of rooms don't have light at the ceiling so I have to keep using these floor lamps that never seem to solve the problem for real, but if I want to add lamps at the ceilings I'll have to break drywalls and repaint everything, so I'm on an never-ending quest to improve lighting at my home.
I've noticed that what consists of ideal lighting for dev work varies quite a lot. Your lighting setup, for example, is terrible for me and reduces my productivity. I need light. Lots of light, preferably coming from somewhere out of my line of sight. Bright overhead lighting is excellent for me.
One of my hobbies is photography and only when I learned the lighting in purpose of making images nicer, I've noticed how poor the average lighting is around us, not just in offices, but in many spaces in general, like apartments, hotels, shops, etc. I've seen really quality light only in luxury hotels. And by quality light I don't mean luminance or even CR. I mean careful positioning, with shape and directionality of the light in mind. But I wasn't aware of it's effects on productivity and focus. Could there be an interesting connection between aesthetics point of view and productivity benefit? Meaning, could it be "measured" in that way?
I'm quite the opposite: the more light, the better I am (especially now in the northern hemisphere December!). After painting my office walls with a reflective white and putting additional lamps on it, my productivity increased significantly (because the depression I felt inside the office went mostly away!).
In fact, my whole house has this problem: lots of rooms don't have light at the ceiling so I have to keep using these floor lamps that never seem to solve the problem for real, but if I want to add lamps at the ceilings I'll have to break drywalls and repaint everything, so I'm on an never-ending quest to improve lighting at my home.
I've noticed that what consists of ideal lighting for dev work varies quite a lot. Your lighting setup, for example, is terrible for me and reduces my productivity. I need light. Lots of light, preferably coming from somewhere out of my line of sight. Bright overhead lighting is excellent for me.
One of my hobbies is photography and only when I learned the lighting in purpose of making images nicer, I've noticed how poor the average lighting is around us, not just in offices, but in many spaces in general, like apartments, hotels, shops, etc. I've seen really quality light only in luxury hotels. And by quality light I don't mean luminance or even CR. I mean careful positioning, with shape and directionality of the light in mind. But I wasn't aware of it's effects on productivity and focus. Could there be an interesting connection between aesthetics point of view and productivity benefit? Meaning, could it be "measured" in that way?
This is surprising. I generally notice that I have more eye fatigue when working in a dark room compared to when I keep the room bright.
> Is lighting an invisible variable in productivity that startups are ignoring?
There are two questions here- lighting is a known factor influencing productivity, you can easily google that.
Are startups ignoring it? I don't have any data showing that, but I wouldn't be surprised