Sounds like a habit one living near the equator would take for granted and pass off as wisdom. In Anchorage, that would mean sleeping in past 9 in the winter. Good luck keeping a job on that schedule.

I’m pretty sure $300 worth of LED bulbs will work just fine. Getting to 50,000 lux or so in a room (which is some equation with lumens and the volume of the room, a small apartment should be easy to make bright as day vs a warehouse). It’ll only cost as much as running a few hundred watt bulbs incandescent bulbs did back in the day. The sun isn’t magic or anything.

Not saying it wouldn't be just as good, but the spectrum of emitted light would not be the same as the sun.

Then get the good daylight-simulator LEDs from Yuji[0]. If the spectrum is still too incomplete for your tastes, I'd recommend a carbon arc lamp, perhaps with a spectrum shaping filter to get up to 5600 K CCT.

[0]: This model is AFAIK the cheapest one per lumen in their non-entry-level series: https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/vtc-series/products/v...

It improves your sleep / wake cycles.

What does the glass block that improves your sleep and wake cycle?

UV light? Not a proponent of the idea (I live in Seattle, corncob LEDs FTW), but it is the only thing I can think of.

Glass blocks UVB. It doesn't block UVA, which is the light that is positively correlated with sleeping patterns.

https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q12082.html

https://bmcdermatol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-...

common sense?