Soraa Launches Health-Related Lighting for Hotels

FREMONT, CA—Throughout Shuji Nakamura’s career in lighting science and technology, he always wanted to create a light source that would match the characteristics of the most natural illumination—the sun.

It is why he founded the Soraa lighting company, which means “sky” in kanji, the logographic Chinese characters that are used in the Japanese writing system.

“Soraa was founded in 2008, and since then has delivered some of the most world-changing innovations in LED science, particularly through our proprietary GaN-on-GaN LED technology,” said Nakamura. “Soraa’s LEDs emit more light per LED material than any other LED; handle more electric current per area than any other LED; and our GaN-on-GaN crystals are up to a thousand times purer than any other LED crystal. These factors lead to what many recognize as Soraa’s superior quality of light, color rendering abilities and optics.”

Creative and forward thinking, Nakamura believed that GaN-on-GaN would be the future of lighting. This advancement laid a foundation for many of Soraa’s subsequent contributions to LED technology, including its patented zero-blue technology called Soraa ZeroBlue. “Light brings form, function and emotion to a space and, because of the performance of Soraa LEDs, these factors can find levels of nuance not previously possible,” said Nakamura.

“We know blue radiation wakes you up in the morning, getting you ready for the day, but it can be problematic at night as it interferes with our circadian rhythms and inhibits sleep—a common side effect of too much artificial blue light exposure,” said Soraa Chief Scientist Aurelien David. “At Soraa, we believe light has a strong impact on our everyday life, and we cannot compromise the quality of light. We developed blue-free products to provide a light source that is healthy at night and respectful of your sleep cycle without sacrificing color quality.”

Health-related lighting solutions aim to do more than illuminate dark areas; they’re being designed with a focus on helping guests achieve better sleep.

“Researchers recently found sleep-related hormones, such as melatonin, may decrease when we are overexposed to blue light,” said Nakamura. “In other words, if we use white light made with blue LEDs at night, we may have increased difficulty falling asleep. At Soraa, we have been able to create white light with violet phosphor while removing blue, creating pleasing white light without the blue. Until now, no other LED or lighting manufacturer has ever designed a completely blue-free light source.”

Nakamura said Soraa’s ZeroBlue technology is revolutionizing LED science with its engineered mix of green and red phosphors, which produces a spectrum with a wide gap in the blue range—a first for the industry.

Nakamura sees hoteliers being able to reap the rewards of this type of lighting as an important part of a hotel’s overall success metrics.

“The hotelier taking advantage of Soraa Healthy products will create environments that are literally easy on the eyes—whether revealing new depths of color and dimension in common spaces, or aiding realignment of the circadian rhythm of patrons in guestrooms,” he said. “Hoteliers can therefore deliver more than a place to sleep; they can invite patrons to receive the gift of rest.”