To start with, day lighting is a building design strategy than involves the best possible usage of natural sunlight or light in an office or home environment. This is with a sole aim of decreasing the dependency of electricity or other manmade energy sources to produce lighting required for tasks around the house or in a work place. It is not unusual for a number of different methods to be used so as to utilize the available natural light in the most efficient manner.

The green approach

Day lighting is one of the best ways to take on a green approach to lighting a building. This greatly helps in the process of energy conservation. Windows are some of the most common design elements that make day lighting possible. In this regard, a number of window-like structures are installed on the roof of a building to allow more natural light in. Their placement is done in such a manner as to allow maximum day light in throughout the day. This is why these day lighting structures are commonly referred to as skylights.  

Skylights allow maximum light in small spaces in both the mornings and the afternoons. They help to minimize the amount of energy that has to be expended in order to provide sufficient lighting for work places like kitchen counters and work places such as desk area, office cubicles and the likes. In terms of costs, skylights are probably one of the most affordable of all day lighting options or resources.

Can a skylight make it possible to keep working in a cloudy day?

Properly installed skylights offer an easy way to access the natural sunlight. When correctly placed on a sloping roofline, one or several skylights can maximize the amount of light entering a room or the entire building. So depending on where a skylight is placed, it can make it possible to keep working even if the day is to some extent cloudy. The inclusion of a sky window on a flat roof produces the same effects as a skylight that has been placed on a sloped roof.  

Additional merit of day lighting

Apart from significantly reducing the overall energy costs, sky lighting is considered a perfect way to enhance morale in a workplace. By allowing the employees to enjoy exposure to more natural light in their work station, productivity is greatly enhanced while the potential for negative interaction between them seems to decrease. So looking at it from this perspective, it is possible that taking steps to day light an existing workspace, for example using strategically placed skylights, could easily pay for itself in terms of lower power bills and increased productivity in as little as one calendar year.

What about if you want to minimize the light coming into a room through a skylight?

Although the passage of more natural light into a space is what almost everyone looks forward to, if in excess, it can turn to be counterproductive. Fortunately, one of the best ways to minimize the light coming into a room from the outside is through the use of skylight shades. In some cases, you can completely block the sunlight entering a room via the skylight. This however is not what most of the building owners are looking for with the installed skylights. Rather, they want a simple filter or a way to subdue the amount of light that is allowed into a room. Skylight shades are a perfect option when it comes to reducing the amount of light allowed into a room.

Skylight shades come in a number of designs and types. If you want to minimize the amount of sunlight exposure that occurs at different times of the day, the best types of skylight shades to opt for are those which are made of fabric materials. Most of these are thick enough as to minimize the brightness of any sunlight that comes through the skylight. The fabric is mounted onto a metal or wood frame and is controlled by electronic hydraulics or with hand crank, making it easy to move the shade into position as need be.

For privacy sake

For privacy sake, a building owner can install any number of shades long the skylights so as to provide partial or complete blockage of the view into the space. This is particularly important in buildings that are surrounded by taller buildings, making it possible to effectively close the skylight during certain times of the day or night when total privacy is required.

Energy conservation focus

The best types of skylights in this regard are those that are constructed with durable fabrics on the interiors and backed with a thin layer of aluminum filament on the exterior side.

In conclusion, there are different priced types of skylights that can be opted for by building owners. Their prices however depend of factors such as size, material make, design and where the skylight is to be installed. Basically, skylights that are operated with a hand crank is less expensive compared to those operated with a motorized hydraulic system.