Hunting the Sunrise: What Happens When You Live by the Sun?
Most of us instinctively believe we know the difference between indoors and outdoors. But while a typical indoor space might provide 300 lux of light, even an overcast sky can expose us to around 10,000 lux. On a bright summer’s day, that figure can rise to 100,000 lux.
Our eyes adapt so effectively that the difference may not feel dramatic. Our bodies, however, know exactly where we are.
In this episode of Sunlight Matters, Shadowmap’s Georg puts his own body to the test. For three weeks, he is getting up before dawn, travelling across Vienna to watch and film the sunrise, and examining what happens when he begins living in closer alignment with the natural cycle of light and darkness.
Guiding the experiment is daylight and sleep researcher Nicholas Witton, whose work explores how visible and non-visible light affect human sleep, behaviour and biology.
The experiment
Georg has committed to watching the sunrise outdoors every morning for three weeks. Alongside a detailed personal diary, he is using:
- A wearable light sensor recording different wavelengths of light every 30 seconds, including melanopic light and near-infrared exposure
- Salivary cortisol and melatonin testing
- Continuous monitoring of sleep, heart rate, heart rate variability, stress and physical activity
- Blood tests taken before and after the experiment
- Established sleep and chronotype assessments
The experiment also coincides with a highly restricted diet that excludes meat, salt, sugar, heated oils, tobacco and stimulants. That makes this citizen-science project fascinating, although not a controlled clinical trial: any changes cannot necessarily be attributed to morning light alone.
What Georg has experienced so far
After an initially difficult adjustment, Georg describes noticeable changes in his energy, productivity and relationship with sleep.
On his best morning, after a particularly good night’s rest, he watched the sunrise, meditated, swam and cycled back into Vienna feeling almost “high” with energy. He is procrastinating less, working more efficiently and organising his day around protecting his bedtime.
Perhaps the most profound change is psychological. After years of unreliable sleep and sometimes dreading bedtime, Georg is beginning to look forward to it and trust that he will sleep well.
There are trade-offs. Rising at around 4.30 am makes evening socialising almost impossible, and the early days brought fatigue, sleep debt and the occasional need for a substantial nap. But after his first week, the routine is already beginning to feel more natural.
Are our cities designed to keep us from the Sun?
One of the experiment’s unexpected findings is just how difficult it can be to see the sunrise in a city.
Buildings obscure the horizon. Parks and cemeteries remain locked until long after sunrise. Rooftops are inaccessible, and many of the best views belong to people living in elevated apartments or on the outskirts.
Georg uses Shadowmap to identify the parts of Vienna that will receive direct sunlight shortly after dawn. He then works out whether he can physically reach them, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. One failed attempt involved a locked cemetery, climbing onto a hut and a characteristically Austrian encounter with a member of staff.
His experience raises a serious question for architects and urban planners: if access to morning light is important for our health, should cities provide places where everyone can experience it?
As Georg puts it, sunlight should not become a privilege reserved for those living on the upper floors.
What we discuss
- Why modern humans spend roughly 90% of their lives indoors
- The enormous difference between indoor and outdoor light
- How artificial lighting disrupted our relationship with the solar day
- Why morning light helps synchronise our biological clock
- Cortisol, melatonin and the body’s transition between sleep and wakefulness
- Whether morning people and night owls once helped protect early human communities
- How industrialisation imposed standard working and sleeping times
- The effects of “social jet lag”
- Why sleep is usually the first thing we sacrifice
- The value of short power naps and complete 90-minute sleep cycles
- Georg’s changing mood, energy, productivity and attitude towards sleep
- Why viewing the sunrise may offer something beyond simply being outdoors
- The difficulty of finding direct morning sunlight in a modern city
- How Shadowmap can help people hunt for accessible sunrise locations
- The responsibility of architects and planners to design more sunlight-conscious cities
- What the team hopes to discover when Georg’s biological and light-exposure data arrive
A tomato plant under the stairs
Nicholas offers a memorable description of modern life: we have become like tomato plants kept beneath the stairs rather than beside the window.
We can alter what we eat, how much we exercise and when we go to bed. What we cannot change is the body’s fundamental relationship with light. Yet through artificial illumination, indoor living and urban design, we have created environments that allow us to behave as if that relationship no longer matters.
This experiment asks what might happen if we begin paying attention to it again.
This is the first instalment documenting Georg’s three-week experiment. In the follow-up episode, we will examine the light data, sleep records, hormone measurements, blood results and personal diary to see whether the biological evidence matches his lived experience.
Sunlight Matters is a podcast exploring the role of the Sun in human health, architecture, cities, and everyday life.
Through conversations with scientists, architects, and technologists, the series examines how natural light shapes our bodies, our buildings, and the way we live indoors.
Hosted by Dave Wallace, Sunlight Matters asks a simple but overlooked question: what happens when we disconnect from the Sun?
Because sunlight isn’t optional. It matters.
Please do not forget to Like and Subscribe.
