Sol Creates the First S.A.D. Bar Where the Sun Never Sets

Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is a widely recognized affliction that strikes in the heart of winter when the weather is bone-chilling cold and the sun’s rays often head to other parts of the earth.

To counter the SAD depression, one bar in London is bringing back the sun. Sol has opened the UK’s first bar where the sun never sets. After seeing staggering statistics about the effects low levels of sunlight exposure can have on people in colder climes, Sol Bar found a way to help. The establishment reconnects city-dwellers with the positive energy and feeling of being in the sun when there isn’t any.

Coinciding with the clocks going back, the bar extends the summertime with specialist SAD lamps that give the optimal amount of sunlight a day, stimulating the release of serotonin and providing the vitamin D benefits of the sun, along with the scents, sounds and warm breeze of the summer air.

Sol commissioned research through Markettiers to uncovered people’s perceptions of how the sun impacts their lives:

• Spending more than 30 minutes in the bar is longer than what 45 percent of office workers said they spend in the sunlight during the winter. This contrasts with the 82 percent of people who agree that having an adequate amount of sunshine daily is important to keeping them healthy and 78 percent agree it’s key to improving their mood

• Over half (56 percent) of people agree a lack of sun leaves them with low energy, followed by 49 percent who say it makes them feel sad

• The lack of sunshine seems to be such an issue for people surveyed, that more than one in five (21 percent) said that if they were to move abroad, better weather would be the greatest influence behind their choice