LED Light Fixtures Create the Illusion of Daylighting by Daniel Rybakken

One of these innovative designers experimenting with LED lights to create a false reflection of sunlight on the interior walls. Using more than 3,000 LED lights, which provide natural color of sunshine, Daniel Rybakken designing the lighting fixtures in the form of parallelograms, which gives the impression of sunlight entering through windows and reflected off the surface. Fraud is a mild, although completely artificial, perhaps just to bring things out into the living comfort in the bleak room.

Rybakken had been working on projects that involve daylighting and wanting to test them out in an architectural setting, he took over an entrance to a building in Stockholm and completely retrofitted it. The entrance and stairwell had no natural sunlight whatsoever and Rybakken’s hope was to “replicate the positive sensation of daylight.” Walls were painted white and the staircase core was retroffited with Rybakken’s parallelogram-shaped LED light fixturesmounted flush into the walls, with a total of over energy efficient 6,000 LED bulbs.

Before, the entrance was a dark, dank, scary sort of place, and afterwards, with the white walls and reflecting light on the stairwell, you’d think they had added windows and a skylight. This light shift makes a huge difference on the psyche and even though all you see is a distorted rectangle light reflection, it looks exactly the way actual sunlight would reflect in through a window on a wall. Granted Rybakken used over 6,000 bulbs which certainly adds up in the energy department, it’s still fascinating work.