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Comment by pseudo0 | Hacker News Reader

This seems like the sort of idea that is perhaps well-intentioned but would rub many workers the wrong way, like the Amazon mindfulness pods [0]. Employees might wonder why they can't have 15 minutes to take a paid break in actual sunlight instead of getting a dystopian fake window.

[0] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-men...

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There are lots of good use cases. The basement storage area of my apartment complex boarded up all the small windows for maintenance / security reasons, but I use my basement as a micro-workshop. Having a fake daylight simulator window would be excellent.

Similarly my office has some small spaces that are perfectly sized for taking calls or having 1-on-1 meetings, but to depressing to sit in for more than an hour since there are no windows. A fake window is not a window replacement, but would make them nicer places to sit for small amounts of time.

Well, dystopian winter (October-March) in Scandinavia has many cities with no sunlight for weeks at a time due to latitude and weather, so some really good artificial lights would definitely be welcome.

It isn't that bad. The area that is without sun for weeks is pretty small and there aren't many people living there, so trying to build a company to catch that market is suspicious at best.

For rest of the country the main concern is the shorter days - meaning you can easily go to work before sun comes up and leave work just as sun is going down. But during working hours there is plenty of light even if the day is cloudy since snow is very reflective.

I see the main problem with the designs OP posted that they are just LED panels mounted on a wall. You don't get the same feeling of being in the sun when the light is not directional. You might as well just have one of the "bright light lamps" on your desk that have been sold for decades to combat "sunlessness".

I don't know about Scandinavia, but even in Paris, France, there can be weeks during the winter when the sky is mostly covered, and you get next to no light.

I used to live in an apartment with huge windows, west-oriented, and no other building close by, and I still went out and bought a big ass LED light for working from home in winter. It made a huge difference to my mood.

I live in Scandinavia. I'm not from Scandinavia - I moved here in my 30s.

And trust me, even overcast days bring light. It simply isn't as bright as you desire. Lots of folks would rather have more light when it is cloudy. It definitely isn't going to compare to a month of 4-hour-long days with the sun staying low in the sky. Further south, I've seen cloudy days brighter than a sunny day in December where I*m currently living.

I live in Prague, in central Europe. During winter and autumn months the sun goes down around 16:00. People who work normal 9-to-5 hours essentially don't get any sunlight outside. Waking up in the morning in darkness sucks, leaving office in darkness sucks even more.

I'd welcome some sort of automated, artificial light source at my home office during those five months.

Warsaw is very similar to Prague but even worse.

There are 29 average sunshine hours in whole December - less than in Stockholm. That means that even if you have 8 hours of "daylight" in a day, less than one hour is when you see the sun.

I once went an entire Oct/Nov in northern Sweden seeing the sun only for maybe a couple of hours total per week because the weather was so dreary any time I was able to go outside during the day and given how short the days are in the winter.

Some days, the moon provided more light (as you say, because of snow reflection) than the sun.

Those can be some very depressing days ... weeks ... months.

Latitiude AND weather. December 2020 Stockholm had 4 hours of sun for the entire month.

2007 West Norway had an exceptional autumn, but that year I don’t remember seeing the sun between approximately September 15th and December 15th.

It might have broken through at some point when I was inside, but it was raining every single day.

That sounds so depressing. Especially in the later part of the year, the sun is weak as it is, so what is diffused through the clouds is barley enough to lift the mood.

It’s pretty bad, dude. West Norway in November; sunrise at 08:40 and sunset at 16:10. 1.2 feet of rainfall on average. 20 days of rain on average, and 20 hours of sunlight. This is far south of the Arctic Circle!

Sure, it’s not a market of millions, but that wasn’t my point. If you’re prone to seasonal depression, you’ll want a daylight lamp. Thankfully, those are available!

Winter at high latitudes can be very depressing. I've built such light fixtures for my home in the UK because it can be gray for weeks on end, without a 15-minute window of sunlight.

I looked into something like this for my bathroom, it's small with no windows, and a fake natural light source would certainly improve it

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