Ulysse Dormoy has spent 36 years in the lighting industry, watching it transform from analog to digital — and more recently, from a purely visual technology into something with profound implications for human health. In this conversation, Ulysse brings a rare perspective: a lighting industry insider who has followed the science of light and biology deep enough to conclude that his own industry may be part of the problem.
He and his colleague Jeremy Fielding took spectrometers into the retail stores of Oxford Street and Regent Street in London to measure light quality in environments that should, above all others, be getting it right. What they found was revealing — and in some cases, absurd. He also shares how wearable light-measuring technology exposed just how little infrared light he was absorbing on even his most “outdoorsy” days — and what that means for the rest of us spending our lives under LED lighting.
Ulysse draws a compelling parallel between the industrialization of food and the industrialization of light: we’ve been fed, but we’re not being nourished. And he makes the case that red light panels, now booming as a consumer wellness product, are simply supplementation for something our indoor environments have quietly stripped away.
Timestamps
- 00:00 Light and the Modern Health Crisis
- 01:06 Meet the Lighting Insider
- 03:47 From Analog Lighting to LEDs
- 06:55 Flicker, Drivers, and Hidden Effects
- 10:08 Why Spectral Quality Matters
- 11:00 Retail Lighting Experiment
- 12:28 Where Beauty Stores Get It Wrong
- 16:01 Why Retail Lighting Needs to Improve
- 19:34 Discovering the Biology of Light
- 24:32 The Human Sustainability Perspective
- 28:05 Light as a Form of Nutrition
- 30:52 Understanding Bulb Labels and Metrics
- 33:15 Origins of Life and Energy
- 35:24 When Efficiency Priorities Backfire
- 36:45 Light as Prevention
- 38:18 Rethinking Light Measurement
- 40:40 Sunlight vs Artificial Light
- 42:59 Living Indoors Like a Space Station
- 46:09 What Light Really Is
- 49:06 Policy, Hospitals, and Lighting
- 52:51 Anecdotes vs Evidence
- 58:45 Measuring Light With Wearables
- 01:03:35 Screens and Indoor Living
- 01:09:33 Real-Time Biometrics
- 01:12:27 Closing Thoughts and Show Notes
“What You’ll Learn” Bullets
- Why the shift from incandescent to LED lighting created a quality problem most people don’t know exists
- What a lighting spectrometer revealed when Ulysse and a colleague walked into London’s top retail stores — and why even beauty brands were getting it dangerously wrong
- The difference between a light driver and a light source, and how low-quality drivers create invisible flicker that triggers your fight-or-flight response
- Why red light panels are, technically speaking, a form of supplementation — and what that tells us about our indoor light environments
- The single metric the entire lighting industry is regulated by, why Ulysse believes it’s leading us toward a public health crisis, and what metric we give to plants that we never give to humans
- What wearable light-measuring technology showed Ulysse about his own infrared intake — and why his indoor days put him in what he calls “infrared darkness”
- How the food and nutrition industry offers an exact parallel for what’s happening with light quality, legislation, and health
- Why Florence Nightingale, the treatment of tuberculosis with light, and the arrival of antibiotics are all part of the same story
- What an experiment involving a continuous glucose monitor, cortisol and melatonin swabs, an actigraph, and a windowless room might reveal about how light affects human physiology in real time
- Why Ulysse believes we are, as a species, treating light as a visual aid when it is actually our primary source of energy
Key Concepts Glossary
Color Rendering Index (CRI) — A metric that measures how accurately a light source renders the true colors of objects compared to natural light. A CRI of 100 is perfect; many commercial LEDs still ship at CRI 80, which produces visually suboptimal environments.
Spectral distribution — The range of wavelengths present in a light source. Full-spectrum light (like sunlight) contains a broad range of wavelengths; most LEDs emit a narrow, peaked spectrum that omits biologically important wavelengths, particularly in the red and infrared range.
LED driver — The electronic component that regulates the power supply to an LED. Low-quality drivers switch the LED on and off at frequencies low enough to create perceptible or imperceptible flicker, which can trigger stress responses in the body.
Flicker — Rapid, repetitive variation in light intensity produced by some LED drivers. Even when not consciously perceived, flicker has been shown to stimulate the fight-or-flight response and elevate cortisol.
Melanopsin — A photopigment discovered approximately 22–23 years ago in specialized retinal cells. It plays a key role in circadian rhythm entrainment and the non-visual biological effects of light.
Human-centric lighting / Circadian lighting — Industry terms for lighting designed to support biological rhythms by varying color temperature and intensity throughout the day. Ulysse remains open-minded about whether current implementations produce meaningful physiological change.
PPFD (Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density) — The energetic metric used to measure light for plants in greenhouses. Ulysse uses this as a pointed contrast: we give plants an energetic measure of light because we want them to thrive, but we give humans only a visual measure (lux/lumens).
Lumens per watt — The efficiency metric that dominates lighting regulation in both the UK and the US. Ulysse argues this single metric is driving the industry toward better energy efficiency at the expense of light quality and human health.
Infrared light — Wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum (roughly above 700nm) that are present in sunlight and incandescent light but largely absent from LED environments. Research by scientists such as Glenn Jeffery suggests infrared has meaningful effects on mitochondrial function and metabolism.
Nitric oxide — A molecule synthesized in the skin through ultraviolet light exposure, with important cardiovascular and physiological effects. Referenced in the context of Richard Weller’s research and the unintended consequences of broad sunscreen use.
Least Button — A wearable light-measuring device that records light exposure across multiple spectral channels every 15 seconds. Ulysse uses the 11-channel version (measuring into infrared above 1000nm) to quantify his own daily light consumption.
Morbidity compression — A concept from the Guy Foundation’s work in quantum biology: the goal of compressing the period of ill health and decline toward the very end of life, rather than experiencing a long slow deterioration. Ulysse cites light as a meaningful factor in achieving this.
Connect with Ulysse Dormoy
Website: www.atrium.ltd.uk
Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulyssedormoy/
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