Gather ‘round and let me tell you a story about the dark sky that makes mid-afternoon feel like midnight, and the light source that makes it at all bearable. Once a year, winter appears with a quick chill of the ears and sudden craving for a vat of hot chocolate. It brings all things beautiful: holiday lights, white blankets of snow in the park and thoughtful gifts. But it also invites in the cold and heaping amounts of darkness. I came of age in upstate New York, where sunlight is gone by half past four in the afternoon the entirety of December and January. That’s to say this isn’t a new phenomenon for me, but that hasn’t made it any less painful. In fact, it has caused a feeling of dread that starts popping up come late September.
But when I moved to Scotland, 4:30PM became nearly 3PM and the sun didn’t fully rise until well after I’d woken up. Even in London where I’m now based, it’s easily dark by 4PM on the shortest days. Like most people, the darkness leaves me exhausted while taking a serious toll on my mental health.
Now to the hero of this story: my SAD lamp. SAD stands for seasonal affective disorder, a depressive disorder triggered by the change of seasons (usually the darker days, though some people experience it in the summer). You by no means need to receive a SAD diagnosis to use a SAD lamp, bright light therapy lamp or wake-up lamp — all names for the same thing.
I bought Lumie’s Vitamin L bright light therapy lamp a few years ago ahead of my first Scottish winter and have used it every year since. The Vitamin L lamp is a slim rectangle that provides 5,000 lux at a foot away or 2,500 lux at about an arm’s length. The latter is the recommended distance for use and more or less how far it sits from me. It’s just shy of eight inches wide with a length of 11 inches and a depth of just over three inches. It can stand in portrait or landscape orientation, too, though I find it doesn’t balance very well in the latter. The light makes up the entire front panel and has a simple power button on the back.
The lamp lives on the floor next to my kitchen table, where I’ll prop it up nearly every morning while having breakfast or starting work. As a big fan of sleeping in, I rarely use it on the weekends unless I’m getting up early to run somewhere and I typically forget or get busy in the morning at least one workday. But when I do have it on, I’ll keep it shining at me from an angle for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how much time I have.
This light is far from an extra table lamp to add a little glow. It’s a very — I repeat for good measure — very bright light. And yet, despite it practically being imitation sunlight, there’s no UV rays to worry about. It really does wake me up just from how bright it is and the daily routine adds a nice structure to busy, cold mornings.
I’ve never received a SAD diagnosis but I do have a panic disorder that causes anxiety and bouts of depression, the latter of which is more prominent during these cold, dark days. I don’t know how much of it is the lamp and how much is a placebo, but it really does help keep my negative feelings at bay and makes the dark days — a bit — more bearable.
Overall, if you dread the darkness of the winter months as much as I do, I highly recommend trying this Lumie lamp or exploring one of the other options on the market. Just the habit of turning it on most days makes me feel like I’m doing something to combat the dreariness. Plus, it really is hard to be tired when there’s a bright light shining near you.
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