Comfortable office environment lighting tips

Get a little lost

The salary of an employee is an expensive part of a company's operating costs. If a well-designed lighting affects one-fifth of the attention of the employees present, this is equivalent to a loss of $5 per square foot per year. For the comfort and satisfaction of space users, providing productivity advantages in a short period of time, providing potential employees with the opportunity to work overtime for a long time.

Here, design strategies and technologies provide office users with safe, comfortable and affordable lighting systems that reduce energy use costs and maintenance costs.

Requirements for office lighting quality:

The above illuminance standards are foreign lighting standards and are for reference only. The key is to focus on lighting quality control requirements.

Get better and better results

A good solution (BETTER) enables you to work with traditional methods to achieve better results and a more energy efficient office lighting system solution.

Figure: Light forms a form of reconciliation between heaven and earth in space - "fish and bear's paw"!

Illuminating walls and ceilings in open offices (now often referred to as "semi-indirect lighting") accounts for the vast majority of lighting quality.

Figure: The use of dimmable semi-indirect lighting fixtures to meet the lighting needs of multimedia conference rooms to achieve different lighting scenarios.

The value of quality lighting

Office quality details

1, glare

A bright source of light that appears on the surface of a darker object or in the observer's field of view is the source of glare. The contrast between too bright and too dark is also a source of discomfort or disability glare, which we do not expect to see in the office environment. Luminaires located in front of or on the side of the staff cause direct glare. The top glare comes from excessive direct illumination overhead. The glare on the computer screen comes from the lights behind the staff. The same reflected glare can also be illuminated by glossy fixtures from the front of the staff. Most glare can be done by increasing the brightness of the surrounding environment or by reducing the brightness of the light source, or both.

Figure: Medium-sized personal office

Some suggestions for reducing contrast:

1. Enhance the brightness of the room surface by illuminating the wall and ceiling or using a brighter color space material;

2. Use a semi-high light grid, white grid or indirect lighting ceiling to enhance the brightness around the glare source;

3. Blocking the light source by using a grille, a baffle, a lens or a cross plate;

4. Use more light sources with lower brightness to reduce the brightness of the light source. Use more fixtures if necessary.

If the expected quality of the lighting is not achieved in the original design, the space user can only take the remedial measures on his own, and the serious energy utilization problems that come with it.

2, to prevent head glare

Figure: Many lighting fixtures are designed to prevent people from seeing the light source directly in the “normal” viewing angle (directly above the eye), but the exposure of the light source in the fixture (downlight, grille panel) still produces glare that hinders the office.

Measures to prevent glare on the head:

1. Do not install more than three T8 light sources in 600mmX1200mm lamps;

2. Do not make the highlight reflector visible at any angle;

3. Do not use high-gloss grille (only semi-high light or white paint type);

4. Do not make the T5 light source visible at any angle.

2, wall lighting and ceiling lighting

Providing a creative work environment, long-term comfort must be considered in lighting design. Illuminated walls and ceilings can reduce contrast, reduce shadows, avoid glare, and distract attention, which directly affect employee performance. The employee's workbench and employee's office task area is the brightest area in the room, and the walls, ceilings, and breaks should be one-third. Light-colored walls or grids absorb light and may not achieve a good balance of brightness.

3, reflection

When light passes through the surface of the space it is absorbed once. Brighter surfaces have higher reflectance than darker surfaces. White ceiling materials are selected and their light reflectance must not be less than 80%. When selecting a vertical wall in the work area, the reflectance should be 65% or higher. All major surfaces should be rough and should not be high gloss for improved uniformity and to avoid reflection glare.

A slight increase in spatial reflectivity is also great for the provision of illumination efficiency. In the case of an equal amount of energy, this brighter room can increase the brightness of the working surface by 55%, or use less than 70% of the energy when providing equal brightness. It also provides better brightness ratio, comfort and natural light distribution in brighter rooms.

4, uniformity

The distribution of illumination light for the working environment should be relatively uniform, avoiding the appearance of "hot spots", shadows or bright and clear graphics. In large space offices or open spaces, there is no need to have only one type of luminaire. Each luminaire must have special illuminating characteristics to effectively illuminate the task and space surfaces. When choosing a fixture for wall washing, be sure to use a fixture that will light the wall from top to bottom. Avoid the lamp position less than 1 meter from the wall. If they are too close together, they will form a messy spot and the upper part of the wall will not be illuminated, thus forming the appearance of the cave.

a, task lighting

Compact fluorescent table lamps allow employees to adjust the lighting they need based on their own visual needs. The “joint” task lighting allows all three panels to be adjusted, which is relatively inexpensive and flexible, and is suitable for task lighting under the cabinet. What's special is that when the ceiling-mounted luminaires provide low ambient light, they can be used to provide flexible lighting that meets the needs of different employees and different tasks.

b, under the cabinet lighting

Cabinets and cabinets contain cabinets that create disturbing shadows on the vertical walls they hang. A small amount of illumination is needed to mitigate this shadow to maintain brightness balance. The under-counter lighting using the front light-transmissive panel is made into a lamp for commercial sale. Standard side-mounted fluorescent lamps can be used. In this case, a T8 fluorescent lamp will provide too much light, so it is necessary to have a ballast that outputs only 50% of the light to reduce the amount of light, reduce energy consumption and balance brightness. On the other hand, under-cabinet lighting directly provides illumination in front of employees, which creates reflective glare, which performs poorly as task lighting, but effectively removes shadows.

Figure: Personal office layout

The design of Pattern 3 and Pattern 6 uses semi-indirect hanging luminaires that are the most effective of all lighting systems, greatly improving the comfort and visibility of mission performance by reducing shadows and lighting ceilings and upper walls.

The design of Pattern 2 and Pattern 5 uses 600mm x 1200mm luminaires, which are the most expensive at the initial price, but offer lower comfort and lighting quality.

Although the shape of 600mmx600mm in pattern 1 and pattern 4 is most suitable for flowers, there is no cost-effective lighting system of 600mmx1200mm, which does not increase any lighting quality.

1. Assessment of savings based on current lighting surveys in New England.

2. The initial cost estimate is based on Layout 2 and Layout 5.

3. In the office range when the power density is not exceeded, and the space of 2.6 meters to 2.8 meters is used to meet the recommended value of the lighting standard.

Open office layout

make a choice:

Layout 9 features a semi-indirect lighting luminaire design that is the most efficient of the three systems, providing excellent work comfort and visibility, eliminating shadows, illuminating ceilings and upper walls. In addition to this, the lamp has an upward illumination without excessive direct downward illumination.

Layout 8 uses 600mm x 1200mm luminaires, the first cost of the solution is the lowest, but provides poor comfort and visibility.

The layout of the 600mm x 600mm luminaire in the layout seven is more popular, but it is more expensive than the 600mmx1200mm, and the efficiency is relatively low, and there is no positive impact on the lighting quality.

control method:

Different lights are independently controlled in the "domain". In the open office, each area is controlled by a ceiling-occupied sensor (OS) and a manual-automatic switch. The four occupied sensors are placed in the same way, sensing the movement of the entire room. When all the spaces are not in use, the lighting fields are all turned off.