Hospital Lighting: Impact on Employees and Patients, LED Options and Environment

Hospital lighting is the strategic use of light in healthcare facilities to support patient healing, staff performance, safety, and energy efficiency while keeping operational costs under control. 

Today, lighting in hospitals is no longer just about visibility. It affects mood, sleep, recovery time, staff productivity, senior care outcomes, and even how competitive your facility is. In this article we’ll look at:

• How LED hospital lighting cuts energy and maintenance costs
• How light impacts mood, sleep, and healing for patients
• How customizable LEDs support night-shift staff and clinical accuracy
• Special needs in senior care units, parking structures, and pediatric environments
• Practical design and control strategies (dimmers, sensors, daylight integration)
• How Relumination helps hospitals plan and implement modern LED systems

By the end, you’ll see why LED lighting is a safer and energy-efficient alternative to traditional hospital lighting fixtures, and how the right lighting strategy can create a true healing environment.

What is the new Role of Hospital Lighting?

Hospitals are similar to parking structures in that both lights burn 24 hours a day, so why not install the most energy-efficient lighting possible? 

Lighting is not a small line item. 

According to a report by Healthcare Realty, lighting costs on average are 16% of a hospital’s total energy consumption and over 40% of a hospital’s electrical usage.

At the same time, hospital lighting has a great effect on anyone who spends a lot of time in the building. Light has a major impact on human performance and human health because of its ability to enable essential chemical reactions in the human body. 

It enables us to effectively perform various visual tasks, and it also has an impact on our moods, emotions, and our perception of everything.

Because light impacts our body’s circadian system, hospital lighting has a major impact on outcomes in healthcare facilities. 

When you invest in better hospital lighting, patients and your hospital staff will see better and feel better. Lighting can also be the key to speeding up the recovery and healing process and giving your facility a competitive edge.

How Do Hospitals reach Massive Energy and Maintenance Savings with LED Lighting?

LED lighting is a safer and energy-efficient alternative to traditional hospital lighting fixtures. 

Hospitals also won’t have to worry about their lighting breaking and mercury contamination because LED lighting does not contain mercury.

Compared to older, traditional incandescent and halogen lamps, LED lighting can drastically decrease costs by up to 75%, and in many applications even more once controls are included. Since LEDs also run cooler than traditional lighting, this also saves on air conditioning expenses.

Real-World Savings Examples

• Hawai‘i Pacific Health retrofitted the lighting in its four non-profit hospitals and 44 outpatient clinics and service sites around Hawai‘i. HPH will save $10,000–$12,000 monthly from the LED lighting installed in one of its parking structures. Combined with the lighting retrofitted in hallways, waiting areas, cafeterias, and offices, the system will save $1.2 million and see a return on investment in 15 months.
  A case study from the American Hospital Lighting Company, LLC illustrates what happens when a hospital switches to T8 LEDs. A hospital with 500 two-lamp 40-watt four-foot fixtures and 500 four-lamp 40-watt fixtures uses 8,000,000 kilowatt-hours over five years. If the hospital replaced its lighting with T8 LEDs, it would only consume 2,000,000 kilowatt-hours over five years and reduce energy and maintenance costs by $628,847.
• One of Michigan’s largest hospital systems retrofitted 1.25 million square feet of parking garage space with LED fixtures, which saved nearly $170,000 annually in energy and maintenance costs.
• At Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Hubbell Lighting is replacing old fluorescent lighting throughout the facility, including recessed downlights, LED exit signs, and LED outdoor garage lighting, as part of a 770,000 square-foot expansion. Thanks to the LED exterior lighting, people can see the hospital from 25 miles away in any direction—while still benefiting from energy-efficient, long-life lighting.

When you add reduced maintenance to those energy savings, LEDs become even more attractive. LEDs typically provide 50,000+ hours of life. That means fewer burned-out lamps, fewer interruptions in care areas, and less time spent by your maintenance team walking up and down the halls and into patients’ rooms changing light bulbs.

Smarter Controls: Sensors, Dimmers, and Daylight

Modern hospital lighting isn’t just about the lamp—it’s about controls. Today’s LED systems can integrate:

• Dimmers – Rather than unnecessarily using lighting at full power, dimmers in patient rooms, corridors, and procedure areas allow you to provide just the right light level.
• Occupancy controls – Install occupancy sensors so lighting runs at full levels only when needed. In parking garages, corridors, storage areas, and staff rooms, this can provide substantial cost savings.
• Daylight harvesting – Hospital lobbies and corridors where outside light filters in can be equipped with sensors that automatically adjust the amount of overhead lighting to balance natural and artificial light. This can result in 50–75% lighting savings in those areas.

Relumination specializes in efficient LED lighting solutions for hospitals and health care facilities. We can help you design LED systems with controls that reduce energy use by up to 75% or more, without sacrificing comfort or safety.

Lighting, Mood, Sleep, and Healing

Hospital lighting has a great effect on anyone who spends a lot of time in the hospital. Patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical facilities can often find themselves depressed and sad. Poor lighting makes this worse. Proper lighting can make it better.

Here are some of the key patient-focused benefits from upgrading hospital lighting:

1. Better sleep for your patients
   Everyone needs a certain amount and quality of light for their body to function well. If the light is lacking or poorly timed, people have trouble sleeping. Improved hospital lighting can help patients get a better sleep rhythm and more restorative rest.
   Improved mood
   Increased lighting can boost the moods of your patients and staff. Low lighting produces fatigue and total mood disturbance. Light can reduce the number of patients facing depression as a result of their hospital stay and improve the moods of patients who have dementia.
2. Quicker healing and shorter stays
   When your patients are exposed to brighter, properly tuned lights at the right times of day, it can reduce the time that it takes for their body to heal and may reduce the length of their hospital stay. Lighting can be the key to speeding up the recovery and healing process.
3. Less pain and agitation
   Proper lighting can lessen agitation in patients and ease their pain. Used effectively, it can make a huge difference in a patient’s experience while playing a huge role in the promotion of their health and prosperity.

When your hospital lighting is improved, you will instantly see a difference in the health and well-being of all of your patients and your staff members. The best source of light is the sun, but for the patients that have to be in the hospital, brighter, well-designed electric lighting will be better for them than the traditional low lighting of a hospital.

Circadian-Aware Lighting: Exploiting the Different Shades of LEDs

LEDs are available in different color temperatures. A color temperature, measured in degrees Kelvin (K), refers to the color that a black body will glow when it’s heated to a specified temperature. At lower temperatures it glows red/orange, then yellowish white, then white-hot, and then blue at even higher temperatures.

The point is that you can get LEDs that give off light that looks like sunlight during different times of the day:

• During sunrise, the color temperature of sunlight is on the low side (around 2000K) and has an orange/yellow color.
  As the day progresses toward noon, sunlight transitions to a yellowish color and finally to a blue/white light (around 5000K).
• Later in the day, sunlight goes back to the color temperatures it had in early morning.

Our bodies have a circadian rhythm that is controlled by the color of sunlight:

• The color of sunlight during midday is white with some blue. This triggers alertness and elevates mood.
• During the evening hours, sunlight becomes yellow/orange, which triggers melatonin and causes drowsiness.

When your body goes through its natural circadian rhythm, it functions at its peak efficiency. On the other hand, disturbing this rhythm with unnatural artificial lighting causes sleep and health problems.

Therefore, using LED hospital lighting that mimics sunlight at different times of the day is beneficial to your patients. For example:

• Use white light (simulating midday) during the late morning and midday hours in patient rooms and treatment areas.

• Use a “warm” yellow/orange light during the evening hours to prepare your patients for sleep.

• In the areas where your staff work, the lighting should be similar to that of midday to keep them alert.

While there are LEDs that change their color temperature continuously, you could opt for a simpler two-color system for your patients in which one set of lights is for inducing daytime activity while the other is for sleep preparation during the evening hours. Proper LED lighting reduces depression, decreases fatigue, improves alertness, and improves sleep quality.

Customizable LEDs for Staff Health and Clinical Accuracy

More and more research is looking into how lighting impacts our healing and how it impacts employees. Being able to control lighting is becoming more important.

Making the Night Shift Easier on Employees

Research has long established that night shifts are hard on people’s bodies and brains. They increase stress, make heart conditions more likely, and can even increase the risk of cancer because the body’s natural circadian rhythm is thrown into disarray.

You can help repair this, to the best of your hospital’s ability, by keeping your LEDs set at a cool white light setting that most closely mimics daylight in staff work areas at night. Not only can this reduce long-term depression and physical disorders, it can help your employees focus, adapt, and think on their feet.

Using Color Changeability for Mood and Stress

Blue light is calming. Even aside from its use in more targeted healing, different colors of light do impact people’s moods. If you need to promote a calming environment in even high-stress areas, tinging the light with a bit of blue can take the edge off of a situation. This is ideal for:

• Lobbies
• Emergency waiting rooms
• Family waiting areas

Dimmable, color-tunable LED bulbs let you create calmer environments when anxiety is high and brighter, whiter light when clarity and alertness are needed.

High Color Rendering Index (CRI) for Accurate Care

Light doesn’t just provide visibility; it also impacts how people see everything from depth to actual color. Accurate color perception is critical in healthcare. The colors of blood, bruising, skin tone, and eyes are diagnostic tools.

Keep your hospital rooms free of lights that influence how colors are perceived, or make sure the lighting tones can be changed between calming colors and daylight-level illumination. LEDs have a wide CRI range, so make sure your nurses and doctors can switch to a setting that mimics incandescent and natural light. This improves their ability to accurately diagnose based on color and hue when looking at blood, injuries, and eyes.

Creating a Healing Environment for Patients and Staff

Light is a critical aspect of life. It allows us to see all the things around us and perform our daily activities. Lighting is also important because it can affect how we behave physiologically and psychologically. This is why lighting can impact the outcomes in any kind of healthcare setting.

Better for Patients

When the proper hospital lighting is in place, this can help:

• Reduce the number of patients facing depression as a result of their hospital stay
• Lessen agitation in patients and ease their pain
• Reduce the length of a patient’s hospital stay
  Improve the moods of patients who have dementia
• Help patients get a better sleep rhythm

When lighting is used effectively, it can make a huge difference in a patient’s experience while playing a huge role in the promotion of their health and prosperity.

Better for Hospital Staff

Physicians and nurses have stressful jobs, and they spend hours upon hours working hard to take care of their patients. They have to perform a significant number of complicated tasks, such as making charts, giving out medication, and other critical work to ensure the well-being of the patients.

If there is inadequate or poor-quality lighting while they are working, it can create a hectic work environment that compounds stress. Workers can also create more errors when their work areas are not adequately lit. Proper lighting can make the adjustment better for workers on the night shift, reduce eye strain, and increase productivity.

Hospitals that make the investment in energy-efficient lighting will be able to make a great difference by creating a healing environment. Comfort for patients, and their safety and satisfaction, are important reasons to consider implementing the right kind of lighting.

Special Focus: Senior Care Units and Pediatric Environments

Senior Care Units and Dementia

It is estimated that there are currently more than 41 million elderly residents in the United States. Of those residents, more than 5 million are likely to develop a cognitive impairment that will require them to spend some time in a hospital’s senior care unit.

Over the years, research has proven that some elderly residents with dementia develop what is known as sundowning syndrome. It is a condition involving behavioral issues that typically occur during low-light periods. Those behaviors may be managed non-pharmaceutically by improving hospital lighting.

LEDs are the perfect choice for such applications because they provide glare-free illumination that is similar to natural sunlight. That, in turn, helps to reset the patient’s circadian rhythms as well as reduce the visual disturbances that could lead to behavioral issues.

Additional LED benefits for senior care units include:

• Enough light for elderly patients to move around the unit safely, thanks to the intensity and directionality of LEDs
  Bedside lights that can be positioned so late-night care does not disturb roommates in shared rooms
• Dimming capabilities to maintain comfort while still providing safety
• Shatter-resistant, cool surfaces that reduce the likelihood that confused patients will accidentally burn or cut themselves on the bulbs

Pediatric Hospitals and Positive Distraction

As Arizona’s only children’s hospital, and one of the 10 largest children’s hospitals in the United States, Phoenix Children’s Hospital made lighting part of the patient experience. In the atrium, LED lights were installed on the floor so children could watch the floor change colors as they jumped from panel to panel.

LED lighting has benefits besides saving electricity and money. Colored and color-changing LEDs can spruce up any decorative area. In children’s environments, playful, interactive lighting can reduce anxiety, provide distraction, and help make the hospital feel less intimidating.

Тrends, Costs, and Why Now Is the Time for Hospitals to Switch to LED Lighting

As technology continues to expand in the best ways, it can be difficult for a healthcare system to choose the best option. When it comes to trends in hospital lighting, healthcare facility managers are looking for ways to:

• Lower energy consumption
• Provide patients with a facility that will comfort them and allow them to feel safe
• Provide a comfortable working environment for the hospital staff

At the same time, like many schools, hospitals do not always have the necessary funds to continuously spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on electricity bills. That’s exactly why energy-efficient LED lighting has become so important.

Why LEDs Are a Safe Bet for the Future

LEDs hit the lighting world by storm, and there are several good reasons for that. Not only are they energy-efficient and produce less heat, but they’re also customizable. Everything from dimness to color and direction can be programmed into LEDs.

Early adoption of technology is often risky, but LEDs are here to stay, and their current support systems are built to last. Whether you want to start retrofitting your hospital in sections or overhaul the entire property, switching to LEDs is a safe, future-proof bet.

Operational and Financial Benefits

When a hospital has energy-efficient lighting devices, it will benefit in the following ways (and more):

• Improvement in work efficiency and productivity
• Improvement in overall safety
• Better comfort level for patients and hospital staff members
• Savings in air conditioning costs
• Lower maintenance costs
• Reduction in downtime that can be very costly
• Increased cash flow and the number of patients that come into your hospital
• Potential tax deductions and incentives for energy-efficient upgrades

Typically, a hospital can be over-lit and very bright in all places. There is a high importance in providing the right amount of light in the right areas. Certain areas and corridors in hospitals require a certain type of lighting that can be different from other areas. There is a strong case for hospitals to focus on lighting that is energy-efficient, safe, and healthy.

How Relumination Supports Hospital Lighting Upgrades

Patients are changing every day, and as patients change, hospitals have to change too. Lighting once seemed like only a small difference between one medical facility and another, but it has become a major differentiator.

Relumination specializes in helping hospitals and healthcare facilities:

• Reduce energy costs with high-efficiency LED systems
• Lower maintenance expenses by installing long-life, durable fixtures
• Decrease their environmental footprint by eliminating mercury-containing lamps and reducing wasted energy
• Improve quality of light through carefully designed layouts, color temperature strategies, and control systems

We help you:

• Analyze current lighting and energy use
• Design LED systems that put the right light in the right location
• Integrate dimmers, occupancy controls, and daylight harvesting
• Address special areas like senior care units, parking garages, lobbies, and pediatric zones
• Plan retrofits around your operations so there is no productivity disruption
• Navigate available rebates and tax incentives for faster ROI

Whether you want to start with your parking structure, lobbies and corridors, or critical care areas, Relumination can help you plan, implement, and analyze your hospital’s lighting systems.

Conclusion

Hospital lighting is no longer just a background utility. It is:

• A major energy and cost driver, and a key place to find savings
• A powerful tool for improving patient mood, sleep, and healing
  A critical factor in staff productivity, accuracy, and night-shift health
• An essential part of creating a healing, welcoming environment for seniors, children, and families

LED lighting is a safer and energy-efficient alternative to traditional hospital lighting fixtures. With customizable color temperatures, dimming, and smart controls, LEDs allow you to balance energy efficiency, clinical needs, and human comfort in a way older technologies simply can’t.

If your patients, employees, and visitors are top priorities for your hospital, investing in a modern LED lighting system is one of the most impactful steps you can take.

Relumination is ready to help you save money, improve outcomes, and create a brighter, healthier environment throughout your facility.