Overhead view of a team meeting in a well lit office

BioUp - Human-Centric Lighting

Smart circadian lighting to support the body's natural rhythm

Professionals celebrating in a bright office space

Light doesn’t just help us see - it has a powerful effect on how we feel, perform, and behave.

Human-centric lighting (HCL) goes beyond illumination - it uses the visual, emotional, and biological power of light to enhance well-being, comfort, and productivity in indoor spaces.
As frameworks such as the WELL Building Standard, ISO standards, and the EU’s lighting‑related recommendations included in the new Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) place growing emphasis on people‑focused lighting, HCL is becoming an essential part of modern building design.

BioUp brings the science of circadian lighting into indoor space, helping people stay aligned with their natural rhythm. By mimicking the dynamic changes of daylight, BioUp supports better focus during work hours, promotes relaxation in the evening, and enhances overall well-being without having to lift a finger.

Human-centric lighting: an integrated approach

Visual dimension

Human-centric lighting (HCL) optimizes visual comfort by adjusting brightness, color temperature, and other light characteristics based on the space, activity, time of day, and individual needs, ensuring optimal lighting conditions for every scenario.

Emotional dimension

HCL integrates insights from scientific research and user expectations to create atmospheres that feel pleasant and supportive. Factors like contrast, color, and controllability contribute to environments that enhance mood and emotional well-being.

Biological dimension

Light plays a crucial role in regulating the circadian rhythm through non-visual receptors in the eye. Circadian lighting mimics the natural progression of daylight, promoting alertness and productivity during the day and supporting restful sleep at night.

Personalized dimension

With intuitive controls, users can personalize their lighting experience - fostering a sense of comfort, ownership, and satisfaction in the spaces where they live, work, and relax.

Long-term impact

Thoughtfully designed HCL systems ensure long-term benefits by maintaining positive visual, emotional, and biological effects- supporting healthier, more productive indoor environments over time.

Lighting that enhances human well-being

People spend more than 90% of their time indoors, often under static artificial lighting that disrupts natural biological processes. Light is the body’s most powerful time cue - tuned indoor lighting helps align circadian rhythms, boosting daytime alertness and supporting better sleep at night.

Our human-centric lighting components bring the benefits of natural light indoors to create healthier, more productive environments - boosting focus and performance, supporting better sleep, reducing fatigue, and enhancing overall comfort and well-being.

Offices employees produce 18% more with HCL

Students score 14% higher on tests with HCL

Retailers sell 25% more with shopper-centric lighting in place

Extra light during the workday can improve sleep

Source: Lighting Europe - Healthy Buildings Infographic (PDF)

Understanding BioUp and its benefits

BioUp is a spectrally tunable technology allowing for minute adjustments to certain wavelengths in the LED light spectrum. By enhancing the LED spectrum with cyan light, BioUp supports the biological impact of light without changing its visual color or intensity.

Discover the BioUp brochure

Helps people feel and perform better

People may not notice the effect of BioUp on the visual color or intensity of light, but they will experience the impact on how they feel and perform. BioUp supports the human circadian rhythm for enhanced engagement during the day while allowing good sleep quality at night.

Woman sleeping in bed with regulating light on

Helps regulate the internal body clock

Creating a cyan peak at 480nm in the LED spectrum at the right time of day and for the right duration of time (between the hours of 9am-1pm) helps regulate the internal body clock.

Group of people sitting at a shared desk using their devices

Offers properly designed melanopic light

Melanopic light plays a major role in synchronizing the internal body clock (circadian rhythm) via the non-visual effects of light. Properly designed melanopic light brings the benefits of natural daylight indoors, enhancing visual comfort, well-being, and performance.

Read our white paper on melanopic light

Delivers melanopic benefits indoors

BioUp is designed to deliver melanopic benefits to people indoors with limited exposure to natural light. The technology achieves a high melanopic daylight efficacy ratio (MDER) value at broad CCT levels while maintaining high efficacy with a dynamic MDER value of up to 0.97 at 5000 K, producing a spectral content close to that of natural daylight.

BioUp offerings for you

Philips Fortimo LED strip CES BioUp

A true human-centric lighting solution for office applications

Discover Philips Fortimo LED strip CES BioUp

Welcome to the great indoors

Adding HCL capabilities to your luminaires is a powerful way to elevate your portfolio. Easily gain a competitive advantage by offering products that are proven to enhance the well‑being, productivity, and comfort of end‑users.

Our lighting components integrate smoothly into existing systems, helping you bring human‑centric lighting to market with minimal effort - reducing integration time, accelerating development cycles, and optimizing both initial and long‑term costs. Designed for scalability, our portfolio enables you to deliver lighting for well‑being without added complexity, across all key indoor applications.