We’ve all heard about how too much sun can be harmful to your skin. But did you know that the correct balance can have many mood-lifting benefits?

Sunlight and darkness trigger a release of hormones in our brains. Being exposed to the sunlight is thought to increase your brain’s release of serotonin which is a hormone. Serotonin is commonly associated with boosting your mood and also assisting in making you feel focused and calm. At night, the darker light will trigger your brain to make another hormone that is called melatonin. This hormone is what helps you sleep at night.

If you do not get enough sun exposure, your serotonin levels generally take a dip. And lower levels of serotonin can be associated with a much higher risk of depression with seasonal pattern, this was formerly known as seasonal affective disorder or SAD. This type of depression is triggered by the changing seasons.

Having a bit of a mood boost isn’t the only reason to increase the amounts of sunlight you are getting. There are many other health benefits that are associated with getting a moderate amount of sun rays.

A decrease in sun exposure has often been associated with a dip in serotonin levels, which can also lead to bad cases of depression with seasonal patterns. The light induced effects of serotonin are commonly triggered by sunlight that goes in through the eyes. The sunlight you see cues certain areas in the retina, which then triggers the release of serotonin. So basically, you are much more likely to experience this type of depression when it’s winter time and the days are shorter.

Because of this connection, one of the most common treatments for someone who suffers from this type of depression, is light therapy., which is also known as phototherapy.

Having a skylight installed in your home will ensure that you are getting those beautiful rays even when you are inside your home relaxing. For more information on our skylights and installation services, visit our website on www.sundownerskylights.com or give us a call on 021 982 8166.

We all know that the sun and natural sunlight does wonders for the human body and the human mind. The truth is that we do not get enough vitamin D from the sun as we should. Often we do not consume enough of the right vitamins and minerals in general. Many of us live in a reality where we are not putting our health first the way that we should. We do not drink enough water and exercise because there honestly is not enough time in the day. However there is a way to get enough sunlight without changing your entire daily routine.

Skylights In The Home

One way to tackle the issue of not getting enough sunlight and vitamin D is through ensuring that you are in the sun every day and maybe catch a tan while you are at it. Another way is by installing a skylight or two in your home. This way your home will be basking in natural light every day and your entire family will benefit from it. However, if you are a busy person who does spend a large amount of the day in the office, on the road or doing your day job, this option does not help you completely during the week.

Alternative Skylight Locations

Many people spend their days working in a building that does not let in enough natural light, and they spend their days under fluorescent lighting and staring at their bright computer and smartphone screens. Otherwise, they are in an artificially lit warehouse, a factory or even casino. We are subjecting ourselves and our employees to working in dark environments that are doing us little to no favours. These buildings could definitely benefit from more natural light, skylights. The skylight will allow the buildings and the businesses to save on lighting and electricity expenses while allowing everyone the opportunity to bask in natural sunlight every day.

Sundowner Skylights

A daily dose of natural light does wonders for every person and their health. It should be an easy means of caring for ourselves, however, modern society and our hefty working hours does not allow for many of us to get the sunlight we need. Thankfully Sundowner Skylights specialises in installing skylights a in variety of environments. Be sure to contact them today to get a skylight installed so that you can get more sunlight during your working day!

Sunlight is a basic requirement for survival as we understand it. We all need it to survive, and while we generally get enough to keep our bodies functional, the average person spends way too much time in the shade of offices and homes to get enough of it, to see the real benefits of natural sunlight. Many households try and alleviate this by allowing more natural light into their homes, thanks to appliances such as sun tubes, which allow natural light to seamlessly flow into homes. If you have been looking for a reason to get some more natural light into your life, here are some of the top advantages it has on the body and mind.

Natural Light Provides Vitamin D

Vitamin D is a crucial mineral that assists with absorbing calcium, and therefor facilitating the growth of strong, healthy bones. Aside from this, this sunlit vitamin is also responsible for upping your metabolism, stabilising your mood and may even treat disorders such as autism, diabetes and chronic pain.

Natural Light Protects your Eyes

If you want to keep your eyes sharp for longer, then you should insist on using them in a naturally lit environment. Artificial light can put strain on your eyes when reading, and a lack of adequate light does so even more. Given enough time, this will diminish the strength of your eyes and can also lead to tension headaches. Getting enough natural light in areas where you frequently work, read or study, will keep your eyes younger for longer.

Natural Light Improves your Body Clock

Your circadian rhythms, which are large contributors to your sleeping patters, productivity levels and your appetite, all rely on the coming and going of natural light to be properly calibrated. In this day and age, we spend long evenings staring into LED screens, staying up late or pulling all-nighters. All of this effectively disrupts your body-clock and leads to an inconsistent appetite and trouble sleeping. By getting enough natural sunlight, you can improve your body-clock for better health all-round.

Contact Sundowner Skylights for Details

To find out more about how our team at Sundowner Skylights can assist you with letting more light into your home or office, contact one of our representatives today for additional information, or visit our website to learn more.

Is your home a bit cold and dark in winter months, or feeling stuffy and dark in summer time? Often, when your homes windows are too small or you don’t have enough of them, it can be hard to get the ventilation and natural light you need for good health. You may look around your home or building and think, “this place could definitely use some more light and windows” but you don’t have an idea if it is even feasible to add them or even where to get started.

For most homeowners, cutting a whole n your roof or wall can be scary to even think of, but adding in a window, skylight or roof window is not always as difficult as it may seem.

Furthermore, properly installed skylights, windows or roof windows can be a very rewarding way to improve a home’s air quality, healthfulness, energy and visual appeal while also making it a more pleasant place to be each day.

If you aren’t sure what type of skylight or window you want or need, here are a few basics:

Vertical Windows

Unless you are living in a bunker, your home will most likely already have vertical window, and their support structure was incorporated into the walls when your home was built. It should be an easy task for a professional to replace an under-sized vertical window with a bigger one.

Roof Windows

The more traditional windows will admit light at the walls level, while a skylight will bring light into your home from above. Roof windows are somewhat a hybrid in that they will combine some of the top qualities of both skylights and vertical windows.

Skylights

Very often, skylights are the daylighting solution of choice for rooms that have limited wall space, but they can also be an attractive, practical and cost effective way for you to increase the natural light and passive ventilation in any of your rooms.

At Sundowner Skylights, we supply a wide variety of great quality skylights for you to choose from. For more information on our products and services, visit our website on www.sundownerskylights.com.

Skylight are known to brighten up dark rooms, even if it is a small unit it can make a great difference in the way that room looks and feels. There are many styles and brands to choose from. It is advised to try avoid the inexpensive units that have plastic glazing. Although these units cost less initially, they usually don’t last very long and many of them tend to leak. It is better to have a look at the higher quality curbed skylights that are energy efficient glazing and have a factory flashing kit made for them. The kit is not going to add a lot to the cost of the skylight but it will mean having a leak-free installation.

Many skylights can come as venting units, which are able to open or as fixed units that cannot be opened. A venting unit is great to have but it might be inconvenient to open and close if it is out of your reach. So unless you are installing the skylight in a place where it will be easily accessible, you should probably rather go for a fixed unit and save some money. This also applied to installing a skylight in a bathroom, where you will also have to ensure that there is enough ventilation in order to avoid condensation problems. A vent fan for a smaller sized bathroom should provide 1 cubic foot per minute of air circulation per square foot of floor area, or more or less eight air changes per hour.

Generally, skylights are available in sizes that will fit the standard 16 or 24-inch frame. Installing a large skylight will mean that the installer will need to cut one or more of your rafters in order to fit the unit. This installation process is pretty simple when the roof is conventionally framed, which means the rafters on the sides of the rough opening are doubled up and the headers are added at the top and the bottom of the opening. However, it is different when working with a truss roof. The trusses are carefully engineered to carry roof loads, and modifying them in the field is not always a good idea. If your home is built with trusses, you should ensure that the installer sticks with units that are made to fit in between roof members, or gangs many smaller skylights together in order to create a larger window.

In South Africa extractor fans are not as common in our homes as they are in a lot of other places in the world, because we still the options to open our windows all year round but as development changes, so do our homes. This makes extractor fans more common, especially in public bathrooms. But they exist for a reason and they have great potential in many room sin the home as well as in the business.

What Extractor Fans Do

The name, ‘extractor fan’ is relatively self-explanatory.  It is a fan that works to slowly pull the current air out of a room, and all the things that are in the air at that point in time. It works for taking hot, moist or stale air out of a room, as well as any odours that may be present at the time. The purpose of an extractor fan is to help control an environment that does not have much ventilation or needs help with it.

Extractor Fans in the Bathrooms

Extractor fans in a bathroom have so many advantages. Firstly, it helps keep the dust at bay if it is working often. This does require some cleaning from time to time. It removes the different odours that float around. It helps remove a lot of steam from baths and showers, this means that extra moisture will not be as present in the room, and the mirror will not steam up as much as it used to, and it will clear up much quicker. By eliminating the humidity and steam, you are reducing the birth of dangerous moulds. And that is great for your help in its own way.

Getting an Extraction Fan for Your Home

There are no reasons to not have an extractor fan in your home or in your business. They are applicable in rooms other than the bathroom. Get in contact with Sundowner Skylights, to find out about getting an extractor fan in your home or office, or even if you wish to invest in natural light through the use of a skylight.

So you’re thinking of getting a skylight; you have one or you’re about to get one. You’re excited to have a fresh new feeling within your home. You know all about the health benefits that come from having a skylight, like that it’s better for your eye sight, and the natural light helps with mental illnesses such as depression. You also know about how you’re saving money and the planet by not using as much electricity. There are nothing but practical and logical reasons to get a skylight in the different rooms of your home. However, there are other ways to enjoy your skylight.

Skylights in the Lounge

So you’re getting a skylight in your lounge, and this will bathe your furniture in a natural glow that you’ve only ever dreamed of. You know you might have to rearrange some things to accommodate the changes in light. But while you’re moving tables and plants and couches, think about how you’ll use the light. Think about places where you can read and drink your tea on a weekend morning and how you’ll want that light around you. Consider placing your stuff so that you can have warm sunlit naps in the winter, or where you can lie down and look up at the stars when we’re visited by load shedding.

Skylights in the Bedroom

Maybe your bedroom is your private sanctuary and you prefer to read or listen to music in there. Your skylight is there to listen to those nostalgic or those honest songs while basking in the sunlight or even the moonlight. Do your writing, your painting or song writing in a little piece of heaven that is now your own. You could spend a lovely Sunday lazing around in comfy slippers and watching the world around you change as it readies itself for the week ahead. Stay warm on those sunny but icy winter afternoons while you lie under the blanket unwinding after a stressful week and enjoying your own company.

Get That Skyline in Your Home

If this sounds appealing, be sure to bathe your home in a light that in untainted by burglar bars, or a view unobstructed by some billboard or someone else’s carport. Install the best skylight for your home and your needs, visit Sundowners Skylights to brighten up your home, in a way that nothing else could.

A skylight can give the room more lighting, views, ventilation, and often even emergency egress. When your energy efficient skylight is properly installed, it can help minimize your cooling, heating and lighting costs.
What to consider for your skylights design
Before deciding which skylight you want in your home, you will need to determine what type of skylight is going to work best for you and where to put it in order to optimise its contribution to your homes day-lighting, energy efficiency and ventilation.
Skylight selection
It’s recommended that you fully understand the energy performance ratings of skylights so that you are able to select your skylight based on your home’s design and the local climate.
The actual size of the skylight your installing will greatly affect the temperature of the space below and the illumination level. As a rule, your skylight size should never exceed 5% of the rooms total floor area when there are already many windows, the skylight should also be no more than 15% of the rooms total floor area when there aren’t many windows.
It is also a good idea to consider a skylight’s position when maximising passive solar heating and/or day-lighting. If your roof is facing north, your skylights will provide fairly constant but cool illumination. Those that are on east facing roofs will provide solar heat gain and maximum light in the morning. When your skylight is south facing it will provide the best potential for desirable winter passive solar heat gain than all other locations, but it will also often allow unwanted heat gain when it’s summer. By installing a skylight in the shade of deciduous trees or by adding a movable window covering on the outside or inside of the skylight, you will be preventing unwanted solar heat gain. There are some skylights that have special glazing that will help control the solar heat gain.
At Sundowner Skylights we offer a wide range of skylights for all homes and buildings. Visit our website on www.sundownerskylights.com for more information on the installation process and the benefits that installing a skylight can have.

Energy Efficiency:
Skylights are a huge help when it comes to cutting down on the earth’s emissions and also the need for more electric lighting naturally. Using daylight as your home lighting not only helps reduce energy costs and consumption, but it also helps reduce the demand for unsustainable power that is challenging the health of our environment.
• Fortunately solar energy does not produce harmful emissions and it doesn’t require transportation or pipelines like your electric energy does.
• Solar energy is a unlimited resource
• Solar water heating systems that are installed in the U.S. assist in reducing our household energy consumption, along with the nation’s reliance on toxic fossil fuels.

Optimal daylight:
Most people try to find homes that have a lot of light, because we require 2-3 times more light to see by the age of 60 as we did in our twenties. All types of skylights can assist in balancing light in the rooms of your home or office, reducing the glare and also transforming living areas into more open and safer places.

Save Money:
When it comes to skylights, you will be saving money through lower energy bills. Energy efficient, high quality skylights are a very important part of creating today’s green homes. Skylights, sun tunnels and roof windows reduce lighting costs and energy consumptions. Venting skylights will minimize the need for an air conditioner and fans during the warmer months.

Ventilation:
An electric venting skylight will open in order to produce a “passive air conditioner”. Through the exhaust or chimney effect they create, the warm air gets drawn upwards through the venting skylight, providing a cooling effect and fresh air throughout your home.

Privacy:
Houses are being built closer to each other and the balance of providing privacy and sufficient natural light is becoming an issue. Which is why 65% of people who want to buy a home will ask for light form above through skylights in their bathroom, where privacy and light is usually very important.

Add life to small spaces:
The conventional incandescent bulbs will create a unnatural yellow glow, sun tunnel skylights will bring a brighter, white and healthy daylight into rooms where traditional skylights are not always an option. The reflective property of a tubular skylight in your home can also help in reducing your HVAC load by utilizing the natural power of the sun in order to bring passive light, light without the heat that is emitted by electrical sources.
For highly professional skylight installations in Cape Town, visit the Sundowner Skylights website on www.sundownerskylights.com

One of the greatest benefits of putting a skylight in your home is the decreased use of energy and electricity in lighting. Electric lighting for buildings consumes 15% of all energy usage and is a significant cost to both individuals and the environment.

Using a skylight makes your home more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, which not only saves you money, but also makes your home more striking to buyers if you’re planning to sell in the future. Sun tunnel skylights provide a natural and sustainable alternative to conventional lighting.

Any interior designer knows that lighting can make or break a good space. Installing a tubular skylight not only helps you to tie together the natural daylight to illuminate your home, it also helps to efficiently disperse the light for a bright, warm and welcoming atmosphere that pervades each corner of the room.

There are scientific studies that show an increase in the benefits of natural sunlight on health and wellbeing. Suitable daylight reduces eyestrain while reading or working on a computer, and effectively stimulates the human visual system. If truth be told, humans have an inherent need for natural sunlight, and skylights allow you to experience the gentle fluctuations in sunlight that stimulates the human circadian system, controlling sleep and wakefulness.

Studies have shown that people who are regularly exposed to sunlight are more optimistic, sleep better at night and have a higher sense of health and well-being.

Getting a good dose of daylight can boost your mental function and memory by 10-25%, according to most studies conducted. In a range of studies, students were found to perform around 20% better on their tests after a year in rooms with higher levels of daylight. Natural sunlight stimulates your mind, boosting alertness, concentration and focus on the tasks at hand.

With the effective use of skylights, you can reduce your energy bill by 15-40% savings that can really make a difference to your family budget. Tubular skylights allow you to lower costs by reducing electricity use, as well as saving on light fixtures and bulbs that break and regularly need replacement. Sky lighting is by far the more environmentally and pocket friendly option.

Skylights not only bring beauty and radiance to your home, but a natural sense of wellbeing and productivity, while helping you save your money and the environment. Visit Sundowners Skylight and become part of an eco friendly family.