Daylighting for Safer, Healthier, and More Resilient Schools

Designing modern schools demands more than meeting square footage requirements and delivering efficient floor plans. Today’s educational facilities must support cognitive performance, mental health, and physical safety, while operating under increasingly stringent codes and budget constraints. Natural daylight sits at the center of these objectives.

Research continues to validate the role of daylight in supporting concentration, mood, and overall health. For students, these benefits can directly translate into improved learning outcomes and engagement. At the same time, daylight enhances safety by providing visibility during emergencies and reducing dependence on electric lighting. The design challenge lies in delivering these benefits in spaces where abundant interior daylight from windows and conventional skylights is not viable.

The New London Educational Learning Center (ELC) in New London, Minn., illustrates how advanced daylighting strategies can solve these challenges. Designed to serve students with learning and behavioral difficulties, the 2,322.6 m² (25,000 sf) facility requires daylighting solutions that balance life safety codes, wellness goals, and budget realities. This project, and comparisons to educational examples, demonstrate how daylighting evolves as a critical strategy for healthy, resilient schools.

Daylight and student well-being

Daylight is a fundamental component of healthy indoor environments, particularly in schools, where prolonged exposure to static, electric lighting can negatively affect concentration, sleep patterns, and overall well-being.

Research from the Lighting Research Center (LRC) and other academic institutions demonstrates that daylight exposure in schools leads to increased cognitive function, improved memory retention, and reduced symptoms of stress and fatigue. A study by the Heschong Mahone Group finds that students in classrooms with abundant natural daylight advance 20 percent faster in math and 26 percent faster in reading curricula compared to those in spaces with limited daylight access.

The physiological effects of exposure to natural daily light–dark cycles and meaningful changes in the daylight spectrum help regulate serotonin and melatonin production—two processes tied to mood, attention span, and engagement. The discovery of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), which influence circadian rhythm regulation, further solidifies the evidence base for daylighting in educational design.

At the New London ELC, these principles are put into practice. The recreation and cafeteria space, which also functions as a storm shelter, could easily have been dark and confining. Instead, Tubular Daylighting Devices (TDDs) were installed to bring in abundant natural light. Unlike traditional skylights, TDDs use a rooftop dome made of high-impact, UV-stabilized acrylic that captures daylight, even in low-angle or overcast conditions. The light is then transmitted through a highly reflective tube that maintains brightness and color accuracy over long distances.

Inside, impact-resistant polycarbonate diffusers distribute light evenly across the space, eliminating glare and hotspots while meeting ICC 500 and FEMA P-361 storm shelter standards.

These systems not only enhance safety and resilience against extreme weather but also improve energy efficiency and promote occupant well-being by creating brighter, more comfortable environments. Project architect Gary Hay of Hay Dobbs notes, “The quality of these internal spaces is much higher due to the daylight infused throughout.”

This sense of openness echoes findings at the Lincoln School in Fergus Falls, Minn., where the adaptive reuse of an 8,361.3 m² (90,000 sf) former retail store into an educational facility relied on daylighting to make windowless classrooms feel less confining. Teachers reported that abundant use of meaningfully variable daylight reduced feelings of enclosure and improved the learning environment for students and staff.

Together, these examples highlight that daylight is not merely a design feature but a performance driver that directly influences how students learn, behave, and experience their environments.

Daylight, safety, and resilience

Daylighting also supports resilience, especially in spaces designed for emergencies. In storm shelters, visibility must be maintained without compromising safety, yet codes such as International Code Council (ICC) 500 and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) P-361 prohibit conventional glazing solutions.

The New London ELC storm shelter posed exactly this challenge. By incorporating 12 tubular daylighting devices (TDDs) engineered to comply with ICC 500 and FEMA P-361, the design team delivers safe, code-compliant natural daylight. The result is a space that functions daily as a cafeteria and recreation area, while still meeting the strictest safety requirements.

This dual-purpose success is not unique to New London. Rosewood Elementary in Broken Arrow, Okla., faced a similar challenge with its 611.3 m² (6,580 sf) gymnasium, designed to double as a storm shelter. Using six ICC 500-compliant tubular daylighting systems, the school illuminated a space that serves both as a FEMA-rated safe room and as a vibrant environment for physical education, assemblies, and performances.

Both projects demonstrate that daylight and safety are not mutually exclusive. With properly engineered systems, storm shelters and other critical spaces can remain bright, healthy, and resilient without sacrificing code compliance.

Energy and operational efficiency

While the wellness and safety impacts of daylighting are substantial, its long-term operational value is equally critical in school design. According to the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Better Buildings Solution Center, U.S. schools spend an estimated $8 billion annually on utilities, with approximately 26 percent dedicated to electric lighting. Reducing this load through effective daylighting strategies lowers both energy consumption and carbon emissions, while freeing district budgets for educational programs and student services.

Integrating daylighting into new school construction and retrofit projects presents substantial opportunities for energy efficiency and long-term operational cost savings. Electric lighting accounts for roughly 35 to 50 percent of a school’s total energy use, while also generating waste heat that increases cooling loads and places additional demand on HVAC systems. By implementing effective daylighting strategies, schools can reduce cooling requirements by up to 15 percent and decrease electric lighting consumption by as much as 75 to 80 percent.

At the New London ELC, daylighting strategies significantly reduce reliance on electric lighting in multipurpose spaces, creating both immediate and long-term operational benefits. For a district investing heavily in specialized educational services, these savings free resources that can be redirected toward instruction and student support rather than utilities.

These results demonstrate how well-designed daylighting systems deliver measurable reductions in energy consumption, lower HVAC loads, and minimize maintenance demands. They establish more sustainable financial models for school districts while simultaneously enhancing the quality of the learning environment.

Technical lessons and practical design strategies

Successfully integrating daylighting into school design requires careful attention to several technical considerations. Recent projects highlight the following best practices:

• Code Compliance—In facilities such as New London ELC, daylighting systems had to meet stringent ICC 500 and FEMA P-361 storm shelter requirements. The purpose-built TDDs ensured compliance while avoiding the need for costly protective glazing.
• Visual Comfort—Daylighting must provide consistent, glare-free illumination to support a range of learning activities.
• Energy Integration—Effective daylighting should reduce lighting loads while working in tandem with HVAC systems.
• Flexibility—Educational facilities must be adaptable over decades of use. Systems with adjustable optical tubing or repositionable fixtures enable reconfiguration of layouts without sacrificing effective daylight access over the building’s life.
• Collaboration—Perhaps most importantly, these projects underscore the need for early and close cooperation between architects, engineers, contractors, and daylighting specialists. This coordination ensures that performance, safety, and design objectives are aligned from concept through construction.

Conclusion

The New London ELC showcases how a storm shelter and multipurpose space can be both safe and infused with natural daylight. By weaving daylight into its most critical spaces, the school ensures that vulnerable students learn and gather in environments that support both wellness and resilience.

The Lincoln School’s adaptive reuse success and Rosewood Elementary’s storm-safe gymnasium’s energy-conscious design reinforce the lesson: daylighting is not a luxury, nor should it be an afterthought. It is a fundamental design strategy for healthier, safer, and more sustainable schools.

As architects and engineers continue to navigate evolving codes, tight budgets, and high expectations, the imperative is not whether to integrate daylight, but how to do so in ways that maximize its benefits. The projects highlighted here demonstrate that, with thoughtful design, daylight can transform even the most constrained educational environments into places where students thrive.

Neall Digert, Ph.D., MIES, vice president, innovation and market development, Solatube International and Kingspan Light + Air North America, has more than 30 years of consulting and education experience working in the energy/lighting/daylighting design and research fields, specializing in the design and application of advanced lighting and daylighting systems for commercial building applications.