If your wife and her staff are having light induced headaches and it's not sunlight (I get those too. Darn these Irish eyes), have her consider looking up Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome and the Irlen Institute. It didn't surface as an issue until fluorescent lights became the norm as a lighting source. I was diagnosed at 22 and I will swear on a stack of Bibles with a Rosary in my hand that it's real. There are those who doubt it, but it's a real thing and what causes it is being ambidextrous. It's true. Both sides of the brain are competing for the same information and it short circuits and slows down the information getting to the message center. It's rather fascinating, actually.
I've found that the fluorescent lights that give off a green or yellow hue are worse for me. Even yellow walls are a problem. What the difference is in your wife's case, I couldn't say, but if the incandescent bulb is really outlawed, I will invest in lamp oil. I'm just not doing it.
When I’ve stayed in hotels in Boston and SF, it has been all fluorescent bulbs. If I had to live there, I would pitch myself headlong from the balcony into the atrium, screaming down past all those lovely dangling strings of tiny decorative incandescent lights.
Sickly, cold, deathly, green, gloomy, nasty fluorescent lights. Life in twilight. Guaranteed to send those with depressive tendencies into the pit of darkness.
Now, if fluorescent bulbs are mandated, I will do two things: buy a hundred-year supply of incandescents, and buy about five more lightboxes. Daylight in a box, the cure for seasonal afflictive disorder, 320 watts of truly full spectrum fluorescence. So much for energy savings.
Thank you so much for the information. I will pass it along to the Mrs. and she can share it with Mrs. Rogers. Mrs. Rogers has been teaching at the preschool for nearly 30 years and this is the first time she’s complained of headaches so I have to believe that it has to do with the newly remodeled space.
I am a professional freelance photographer. I can’t stand yellow walls! For the last five years or so they seem to be the rage, especially in schools where I do a lot of my shooting. It can be very challenging to get the color balance correct when the area has yellow walls. Other colors cause problems too, but nothing is as bad as yellow!
Thanks again!