A room with a view: Vail Valley-based CEO is on a mission to bring more light into the world

Virginia Woolf wrote about the importance of “A Room of One’s Own” to address social injustices, and now Nancy Clanton, CEO of Clanton & Associates, which specializes in lighting and engineering, collaborates internationally from her home base in the Vail Valley to establish and implement healthy lighting and windows with a view. 

She works cooperatively with 42 other countries as our nation’s representative within the American National Standards Institute, which oversees standards and conformity assessment activities in the United States. Within that realm, she is developing criteria for lighting and views worldwide.  

“Everybody should have access to looking outside,” she said. 

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As it turns out, quality views in the workplace often revolve around stature: For example, judges often enjoy beautiful views from windows in their offices, while court reporters sit in windowless offices — and usually are more dissatisfied with their jobs, she said. 

“Everybody should have access to looking outside.” ~ Nancy Clanton, Clanton & Associates

Research shows that employee productivity, student test scores and hospitalized patients’ health increase significantly when they’re situated next to windows with a view.  

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One study showed that employees are more focused, with a 6% better working memory and 5% better concentration, along with an increase in positive emotions and a decline in negative emotions. Another indicated a 7-12% increase in worker speed at a call center. Yet another revealed a 7-30% improvement on students’ math and reading scores. Studies also point to the health benefits of views, including better circadian rhythms, micro-biome and biophilia benefits, eye health and cognitive benefits such as cognitive mapping, memory and the ability for the mind to wander, which in this case, helps students and employees process information. 

Of course, not all views are equal. A window opening to a concrete wall, window well or other displeasing sight won’t increase health, productivity or well-being as much as a vista of nature. Elements of a good view include the sky, sun, clouds, birds, distant landscape, plants, water and more. The best view includes a variety of layers, such as a close, ground plane that includes movement of people, water or animals; a horizon showcasing distant landscape; and the sky. 

“Exposure to greenery has consistently positive and broad public health impacts,” she said. “(This information) has been around for a long time, so why aren’t we taking it more seriously?”  

While Vail Valley architects do focus on views of the stunning landscape when designing homes and commercial spaces, many people nationwide are still stuck in basement offices or spaces that lack views and natural light. She’s trying to change that by working with ANSI and other organizations.  

She also works with various partners on dark sky initiatives, which impact both humans and wildlife. 

“What we know (is that) life needs daylight, and life also needs healthy darkness,” she said, talking about how we need the blue light of morning and day to activate serotonin and other hormones and the red light of the fading day to produce melatonin. “Daylight lamps or TV messes with your sleep. You should turn everything off at night (and have) no exposure to blue light at night. Blue light even affects plants, birds and animals.” 

Studies indicate that blue lights at night reduce soybean growth on farms, and they interfere with baby turtles making their way into the ocean. And, we now have less than 5% of the moth population, which act as pollinators, when compared to that of the 1950s because they get trapped in light. 

Just as Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” helped transform how society viewed women, experts like Clanton are empowering people to use the gift of nature to be more productive, healthy and happy. Studies show that people with quality views sleep better, are more physically active, have greater working memory and long-term memory capacity, heal faster and require fewer pain medications in hospitals, perform better on standardized tests, write more creatively, process office tasks faster, spend less time taking breaks and talking to others and have faster heart rate recovery from low-level stress. 

So why not harness light and views consciously to be healthier, happier and more efficient?