Did you know that Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), also colloquially known as seasonal depression and the winter blues, affects more than 10 million Americans?
While a small percentage of people are affected by this disorder during the summer and spring months, it’s much more common to suffer from it during the fall and winter. Researchers believe SAD is more common in those months because SAD is related to the amount of daylight a person receives.
Since day and night trigger the release of serotonin and melatonin in your brain, it makes sense that the shorter days that come with fall and winter would affect the balance of hormones your body experiences. Fewer hours of sunlight could lead to a serotonin deficiency and cause higher levels of anxiety and depression in some individuals.
If your Seasonal Affective Disorder is hindering your quality of life, there are some possible renovations that you should consider to help bring more natural light into your home during the winter, thus hopefully reducing SAD’s impact on your life.
Install Larger Windows on the Southern Side of Your Home
While it would seem to make more sense to install windows on the eastern side of your house, since the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the truth is that the side of your home that receives the most sunlight, especially in the winter, is actually the southern side. This is because of the Earth’s tilt.
By installing larger windows along the southern side of your home, you’ll be able to maximize the amount of sunlight you’re able to receive each day.
While renovating your home to have larger windows may seem like overkill based on the fact that there isn’t a definitive link between SAD and the sun, installing them can help boost your serotonin levels. There are also some additional benefits that help make add windows a fairly practical choice.
New windows also bring in additional warmth from the sun during the winter. Because of this benefit, they could help lower your heating bills if you invest in energy-efficient windows. In the summer, you can keep unwanted heat out by buying some blinds or drapes.
Larger windows would also allow you more light, meaning that the amount of artificial light you need to use will go down, helping keep your electric bill down.
Install Skylights
As an additional way to invite more sunlight into your home, you should consider installing some skylights in your roof.
Again, these are going to be most effective if installed on the southern slope of your roof, and they’ll add many similar benefits to installing larger windows. The increase of natural light through your home can help offset the darker and cold days that accompany winter, and you have the benefit of solar gain.
There are blinds and accessories that can help offset the solar gain for skylights during the summer as well, but another benefit to skylights is that they can be opened to create natural heat release since hot air rises.
There are actually some other practical benefits to installing skylights as well. Specifically, some skylights give homeowners tax advantages and credits because they’re considered an eco-friendly home upgrade. Plus, they offer more privacy than installing larger windows.
While any renovations come at a price, the emotional and practical benefits that can come with skylight installation makes them a viable option.
The millions of people who suffer from winter blues may find it difficult to function during certain parts of the year, but installing larger windows or skylights in your home could help alleviate this condition to some degree.
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