The cost of sunrise: wake-up programming

Sunrise in the Dordogne, France

As I am flying out to Holland and France for a well-deserved break, I could not help noticing how my overnight flight from Singapore to Amsterdam used the latest lighting scene sets to get people in the right frame of mind. I went to sleep straight after take-off, but 2-3 hours before arrival the lights slowly got switched on to wake people in the plane up and ready for breakfast. It was very subtle, first soft cool bluish light slowly moving up the aisle from the front to the back right through the center, gradually increasing its intensity. At the same time at the window side a warm amber light, representing the sunrise, slowly grew brighter from an initial soft glow to gradually overtaking the bluish ambient light. The whole process probably taking about 15 mins or so. The colors were very natural.

Now that I am in France, at this time of the year, the sun rises around 8 am, giving me plenty of opportunity to enjoy the morning sunrise at a decent time in a very similar fashion. It just strikes me how well the simulation in the airplane (the latest A350) was done. First the coolish blue sky, which then is slowly pierced by the upcoming warn glow of the sun.

Over the years we have had several hotel projects in which we introduced this daylight/ sunrise wake up scene in the guestrooms as an alternative to an actual alarm clock. Our latest project, the Kympton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur had such scene designed as part of the scene settings, however Covid and related cost cutting exercises, resulted in the control system being simplified at the cost of this wake-up option…again. I say again as we have not managed to keep this option in previous projects either. Somehow it seems to be the first on the value engineering “loose it” list.

Would love to hear from fellow designers out there what your experience is with implementing these sunrise wake up scenes. Let me know!