Hospital rooms should default to red light at night. Hospitals are terrible for sleep, and sleep is when the body actually heals. The worst offender: bright lights flicking on at 3am for a vitals check, a medication change, or just to get up and pee. That blast of white light tells your body it’s daytime and kills any chance of falling back asleep. I believe the fix is simple. Make red the default night-time light in patient rooms. It doesn’t suppress melatonin, so patients drift back to sleep instead of waking fully. In shared rooms, one person getting up doesn’t jolt everyone else awake. Nurses keep a switch for white light when they actually need it — emergencies, procedures, anything requiring a proper visual assessment. Less disruption, better sleep, faster recovery. Why isn’t this already standard?
