As the nights get longer and the days get more overcast, and we all get to spend more time indoors as winter closes in and this can encourage a sense of gloom. This is when we all must find ways to conquer our universal Fear of the Dark. Extensive research has demonstrated that good lighting practices will improve your mood and make you work and relaxation more effectively, poor lighting can encourage poor sleeping, decreased energy or even depression. Extreme fear of the dark is called Nyctophobia, and Freud linked it to separation anxiety, but it is more likely that as Humans are by nature daytime animals with no night vison, fear of the dark is an evolutionary trait embedded into us from Primeval times when the night time was actually an authentically dangerous landscape where predators and rival tribes could attack. Luckily at Tom Dixon we see darkness as the opportunity – the design challenge that we use to inform our lighting creations. Interior spaces deserve to be properly considered and beautifully illuminated so over the next weeks, as we approach the multiplicity of winter festivals and celebrations, we will reveal our ideas and solutions to keep darkness well at bay, and provide joyful, positive luminosity. Together we can conquer our FEAR OF THE DARK.