Let in the Light by T. B. Terry

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Nov 19, 1903

Let in the Light

By T. B. Terry

ALL rooms to be used for working, sitting, eating, and sleeping should be freely accessible to sunlight. For the best results one should not work or sit down in a room during the daytime which has not the full light of day in it. Dampness and darkness are not healthful conditions. A perfectly healthful room should be as light as it is under a tree, at least. Dark rooms favor ill health; so do rooms into which the sun never shines. Where house plants dwindle along, weak and puny, human beings can not be at their best. The glare of the sun may be excluded during the heat of the day in summer, but there should be full light from the side opposite the sun, as far as possible.

Many Americans are making a great mistake in using blinds, shades, and curtains to exclude so much of the light of day. Light, and particularly sunshine, is healthful, as long as we are shaded from the sun during the middle of the day, when it is overhot. In hot weather let the sun shine in early in the day, and again toward night, with its healthful influence. Better that carpets should fade than lives.

Let the sun shine into every bedroom, in particular, for a time, every day it shows its face. Hence, I would have no trees near enough to the house to shade any windows. Trees are grand, in their place, but do not let them shut any sunlight out of any room. Shade means more or less dampness, as well as absence of light, and both are unhealthful conditions. The same windows and doors that let in the light will also allow fresh air to enter, during warm weather, if they are open—and they should be, every one of them. Fresh air is a necessity, too, for the highest degree of health.

Our own house was built, after much study, with the intention of having it as healthful a home as possible. The sun can shine into every room in our home used for working, sitting, eating, and sleeping, freely, either in the morning or afternoon. The north windows open into bathroom and storeroom only. Into our three sitting and living-rooms—all open together as one, by having large double doors—the sun can shine morning and afternoon both, and about all day in winter. And there are nine large windows about seven feet long, besides two outside glass doors, in this practically one room. The kitchen and dining room are about the same as one room, although partly separated, and into them comes the light and air from three large windows, and the same number of doors, with a draught through east and west. The sun can shine in both morning and afternoon. The room up-stairs where I am writing now, and where I often stay sixteen or eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, has four large windows, and the sun can shine in almost every hour of the day, as the windows face east, west, and south. No tree keeps the full light out of any window in the house. All this has not come about without much study and planning.

Do not think from what has been said about blinds that they are not a good thing. They are, when properly used. We have them, outside ones. I never use them to keep an occupied room dark. For example, just now, 9 A. M., the east blinds of my room are shut, and the other three pairs are wide open. From sunrise until about nine o'clock the east ones are open, to let in the morning sunshine. In the afternoon I will shut the west ones until about five o'clock. The shades are taken off of three windows, and each one lets in all the light that can come through an opening two and a half by six feet. It is as light as under a large tree, surely, and the air about as pure.

Now, my dear friends, I do hope these words may not be simply read and no more thought about. I believe them to be absolutely true, and not overdrawn in the least. Study over them, and see if you can not make the lives of the women in particular a little more cheerful and healthful by making some slight changes, if no more. Perhaps one may be to cut down a tree which you know ought not to be where it is. Perhaps you can put in an extra window or two, or a door. Perhaps you can change around a little in the home, and use the most sunny and most pleasant rooms, and the largest and best, to live in yourselves, and sleep in, instead of having them closed, practically, under the old title of “parlor” and “guest-chamber.” “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (and sunshine in all the homes of the people). May the words in parentheses come true in all homes sometime!—T. B. Terry, in Practical Farmer.