Importance of lighting in working environments

There is a reason why LED lighting is fully replacing any previous technology in the lighting industry. It is by far a superior technology, that offers numerous advantages, both in residential and professional applications.

Companies that are aware of this are playing it smart and investing in full replacement of the light fixtures in their offices and work environment, installing LED technology.

But what is the reason they are doing that, and what are the factors you need to take into consideration when changing the lighting technology in your offices to LED?

HEALTH AND PRODUCTIVITY

Lighting has enormous influence over the emotional mood, perception and performance of people! Poor lighting quality has repeatedly shown to create discomfort of people and decrease their productivity.

How so?

One of the factors influencing is the glare. Luminaires that are not appropriate create excessive brightness that is being reflected from the surfaces in the office. This can lead to numerous health problems – such as headaches, and eye problems.  In fact, conventional fluorescent lighting has been identified as a factor causing eyestrain and headaches¹.

This is regulated using UGR (Unified Glare Rating). UGR is a method in which the glare from a luminaire is calculated, determining how much discomfort to people around it the luminaire is causing. The higher the UGR value – the more glare the light produces!

The values bellow show the minimum UGR values needed for different applications:

UGR ≤ 16 Technical drawing.
UGR ≤ 19 Reading, writing, training, meetings, computer-based work.
UGR ≤ 22  Craft and light industries.
UGR ≤ 25 Heavy industry.

Therefore in an office space, the maximum UGR that should be allowed is 19!

Another important factor is sunlight!

Natural sunlight is obviously the most optimal lighting solution. As proven repeatedly by research, natural light dramatically increases productivity and wellbeing of people!
The proper LED lighting is actually the closest alternative to natural light and it can make all the difference in the level of energy and mood of your people!

So how do you handle this?

With Color Rendering Index (CRI). CRI is a number, between 0 and 100, that shows how colors look under a light source, compared to sunlight. A perfect 100 means that all colors look the same as they would under sunlight.

The minimum value acceptable for an office environment is CRI85, although lately the trend is to go even higher, and have CRI90 as it creates a much more natural environment.

HUMAN CENTRIC LIGHTING

Those who are really serious about work environment and productivity (and the most successful companies in the world ARE), are even going a step further, using the technology of Human Centric Lighting.

This latest  technology is a tunable light application, where the color of the light inside the working area is shifting and changing according to the change of the natural ambience light outside. As a result, a more natural environment is created that approximates the conditions that the human body requires, and which follows the natural cycle of light in the environment in real time.

This topic is a whole science by itself, and we will discuss it in details in another post!

Cover photo credits: www.proxyclick.com