00:02Stop f***ing coming in and turning this on without warning me.
00:06Who would have thought that this would become the most controversial thing in our homes?
00:12In fact, on TikTok, videos dissecting the big light, as traumatized creators call it,
00:18have amassed over a hundred million views.
00:20We never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use the big light.
00:29This is a real conspiracy theory.
00:32Well, for me, it's only the lamps.
00:35And the reason she didn't come back over is because you had the big light on the whole time.
00:38Even Mariah Carey can't stand it.
00:40You and I share something in common, and that is our dislike.
00:44I'm going to go so far as a hatred for overhead lighting.
00:48Yes, a dislike, both the dislike and the hatred of overhead lighting.
00:53In fact, big light hatred is so prevalent that Halfords found 25% of Gen Z can't screw in an overhead bulb.
01:01But are we ready to hit the off switch forever?
01:04This is Decomplicated.
01:06The first thing that appears to have turned us off, sorry, to the big light comes down to a simple equation.
01:13Trends and technology.
01:15From hygge to cosy luxury, over the last decade, interior design trends have been focused on what those in the know call soft living.
01:26With a strong Scandinavian influence at its heart, soft living is about warm and neutral tones, ambient lighting and plush textured fabrics.
01:34E.g. it's an Instagram influencer's dream.
01:36This trend comes straight from regions like Stockholm, Oslo and Reykjavik, where they only get six to eight hours daylight in the winter.
01:42So it makes sense that they know a thing or two about good lighting.
01:45Couple this with a rise in technology that allows us to play with the way we light our spaces, such as with smart and gradient lamps.
01:51The big light never stood a chance.
01:53I think people associate the big main light with being this sort of really bright, harsh light that sort of lights up every single corner of the room.
02:02And those days feel like they've gone a little bit and people have wisened up to the fact that you need to do a little bit more to create a really nice home.
02:09Do you think that most people see lighting the way that you do?
02:13I think most people are not really aware of what goes into designing a lighting scheme for their house.
02:19But I think most people instinctively understand when lighting is not right and when it makes them feel bad.
02:26You know, you just know that feeling of, you know, the interrogation table where somebody's sitting there being interrogated with the bright light over their head.
02:34We all know that lighting is a sort of a psychological aspect of how we feel.
02:40I live in Scandinavia in Sweden. And when I moved here instantly, it was like one of the first things that I noticed about people's homes.
02:50Lighting can transform a home done in the right way.
02:53It's a very, very quick fix for making a home not only practical, but also like really cozy and a nice place to unwind.
03:01It's similar to that feeling that you get at sunset when it's this golden photographer's hour and everything is bathed in this lovely, lovely warm light.
03:12It's Gen Z who are leading the charge when it comes to changing the way we light our homes.
03:16Not only are they the ones posting more about it on social media, they're also at the forefront of embracing this trend.
03:22In fact, in the US, TaskRabbit reported that in 2024, they saw a 42% increase in requests from Gen Z asking for people to hang their lights.
03:33It isn't only about aesthetics, though. Research has shown that lighting can have an impact on how we feel.
03:39A survey in the state showed that 67% of people believe that lighting can make or break a room's atmosphere.
03:44While in the UK, Wren Kitchens found that 48% of people found that good lighting improves their mood, while 50% found that it makes them feel calmer.
03:53So it would track that the big light, which often brings brighter and harsher tones to our living spaces, won't necessarily make us feel good.
03:59It can go even further than that. Reports suggest that bright light can have some surprising health and lifestyle benefits.
04:05Blue light, for example, is said to have a positive impact on your mood, enhancing your productivity levels, making it a good light for work spaces.
04:12While orange and red lights can be used later in the day to mimic the sunset, which can help regulate your circadian rhythm.
04:18Professor Manuel Spitscham from the University of Oxford explains that this is something that the big light simply doesn't do.
04:24Light in the evening in particular affects us quite substantially.
04:27It sends a signal to our body that it is not quite time yet to go to sleep.
04:32And so what it does, it delays what we call the circadian timing system.
04:36So our body has a circadian clock.
04:38It's the main signal for our bodies to basically organize what it's doing across the 24 hour cycle.
04:45And any light really affects us in the evening when we're exposed to it and at night.
04:50And so, of course, generally we know that if there's more light, this has a stronger effect.
04:55If we expose ourselves to bright light from above at night, it will have a stronger effect than light from below at the same intensity.
05:02We have a lot of knowledge on the importance of nutrition, exercise, physical activity.
05:08Generally, I think there's also an awareness that sleep is important.
05:12But it's really only in the last couple of decades that we've come to appreciate that light is a very strong signal for our biological timing system.
05:20But if having bright lights overhead at night isn't good for us, where should we hang them?
05:25I asked interior designer Brandon to give me the lowdown.
05:29There's some kind of basic rules of how, you know, we think about lighting.
05:33One is that it's always better to provide a mix of different heights and levels of light, right?
05:39So you will have perhaps an overhead light or a set of overhead lights in a room.
05:44Then you also want to get lighting down here at sort of human level if you're sitting down.
05:49You might also have wall lights which could be at any variety of heights from sort of eye level down, you know, sort of to more chest height.
05:57And then we might put an up lighter on the floor, right?
06:00Something that comes up from the floor just to light up.
06:03Maybe it's a house plant that you want to light or maybe it's something like a sculpture or, you know, a piece of art that would look perfectly lit from below.
06:11Can we please do something about this overhead lighting?
06:15So would you say we've fixed the lighting in here now?
06:18I think the lighting in here is much better now.
06:21So we know how various TikTokers, Mariah Carey and interior designers seem to feel about ambient lighting.
06:27But none of this tells us whether people are actually putting big lights in their homes less than they used to be.
06:32I decided to do some market research myself.
06:35Online you can find IKEA's archive of Swedish catalogues.
06:38I tallied up how many ceiling hanging lights I could see in the years 2001, 2011 and 2021.
06:45I was hoping to discover a marked decrease in ceiling hanging lights as TikTok would suggest.
06:50But I didn't find that at all.
06:52In fact, in 2021 I spotted the most ceiling hanging lights at 51 images.
06:57So maybe there's still time for this thing to shine after all.
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