Most people treat light as scenery. Their body treats it as instruction. A circadian light schedule is nothing more than giving those instructions deliberately: every hour of your day, the light hitting your eyes is telling your biology what time it is, what to secrete, and whether to spend the night repairing or catching up.
The problem with modern life is not too much light or too little. It is that the signal is flat: medium brightness, blue-heavy, from 7am to midnight. A clock cannot read a signal that never changes. The whole schedule below is built on one principle from chronobiology: contrast. Bright days, dark evenings. Everything else is detail.
07:00 to 09:00, the anchor
Ten minutes of real daylight within an hour of waking. Outside, no sunglasses. Overcast still counts: a grey sky delivers many times the circadian signal of any interior. This sets everything downstream, and it is free. The mechanism, and why light through a window does not count, is covered in morning sunlight and the cortisol awakening response.
Daytime, bright and supplied
Work near a window when you can, and keep daytime rooms genuinely bright: a published expert consensus recommends at least 250 lux at eye level during the day, several times what a dim office corner provides. Bright days are half of the contrast your night depends on.
This is also where the red and near infrared session belongs: ten minutes on the panel, bare skin, fixed distance, morning or midday, after training if you train. That session is not for the clock, it is for the mitochondria, the 660 and 850 nm supply that windows and bulbs removed. Daytime is its slot.
21:00, the descent
Two hours before bed, the day ends for your eyes: overheads off, two warm lamps below eye level. Dim light before bed is the half of the contrast most people skip, and it is expensive to skip: ordinary room light in this window delayed melatonin in 99 percent of tested adults and cost roughly 90 minutes of its duration. If screens or bright rooms are unavoidable, amber lenses on: the tint question is settled in amber vs clear blue light glasses.
23:00, dark
Bedroom black, devices out or faced down, every light off. The night does the rest. It always knew how, it just needed the day to stop contradicting it.
The three ways people break the schedule
Running the evening without the morning. Blocking blue at night while waking in a dim flat is half a protocol. The clock needs both edges of the contrast.
Treating the panel as a sun replacement. It replaces the wavelengths your building deleted, not the daylight anchor, and it earns no slot after dark. Ten minutes outside stays non-negotiable.
Enthusiasm. Longer sessions, brighter evenings compensated by weekend resets. The schedule works through daily repetition at modest doses, exactly like training.
FAQ
How bright should indoor light be during the day?
A published expert consensus recommends at least 250 lux at eye level throughout the day, and more is better: sitting near a window can deliver several thousand. Most offices and living rooms run far below that, which flattens the very contrast your evening dimming depends on.
What time should I dim the lights before bed?
Two hours before your target bedtime. That window covers the period of peak circadian sensitivity used in the melatonin studies. Overheads off, warm lamps below eye level, and amber lenses for anything bright you cannot switch off.
How long does it take to fix your circadian rhythm?
With consistent anchors, the clock shifts gradually over several days, so judge the schedule after a full week rather than one night. The sign it is working is falling asleep earlier without trying, and mornings that need less rescuing.
Twenty active minutes a day, two tools: the MYRO Panel for the daytime supply, Nocta Ember for the 9pm descent. The full system is here.
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