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Lighting for the Activity-Based Workplace
You may not charge your team out by the hour, but the meter is still running and marginal gains in productivity add up. There’s plenty of evidence that lighting, noise, and temperature make a difference . When environmental stressors accumulate—such as poor lighting, air quality, temperature, or noise—productivity can drop by 2.4% up to 14.8%, depending on the number of stressors present – A longitudinal investigation of work environment stressors on the performance and wellbeing of office workers.
It turns out that lighting makes a big difference (I would say that of course!) but these studies show that productivity falls in spaces that are either too bright or too dim. Poorly lit environments are linked with increased use of painkillers in a clinical setting indicating physical strain – Visual symptoms, Neck/shoulder problems and associated factors among surgeons performing Minimally Invasive Surgeries (MIS): A comprehensive survey, The relationship between visual impairments and activity of the neck/shoulder muscles among surgeons during simulated surgical tasks.
Although most of us work on screens, reading reports on paper are still part of the picture and the average ambient lighting may not be enough to keep you focused over time – we read, the more light we want, choosing 750lux at 6500k for 60 minutes – Effects of indoor lighting environments on paper reading efficiency and brain fatigue: an experimental study.
This may be due in part to the alerting effects of bright, cool light on subjective and objective measures of attention – Alerting effects of light in healthy individuals.
Exploratory work by Shadab Rahman and his team found that the addition of bright, blue-enriched task light in a hospital setting was linked to a substantial reduction in high-severity harmful errors 23.4 to 15.6 per 1,000 patient-days, even after adjustments for patient age and morbidity – The Effect of Blue-Enriched Lighting on Medical Error Rate in a University Hospital ICU. Bright, cool light during the night shift can even increase moral decisionmaking compared to warm light – Moral decision-making at night and the impact of night work with blue-enriched white light or warm white light: a counterbalanced crossover study.
Most of us are reading on a computer though – and in this condition, it’s the balance of lighting with reflectance of the screen that counts. One study found that visual discomfort, especially poor control over glare accounted for 53% of the variation in neck and back pain – Musculoskeletal, visual and psychosocial stress in VDU operators after moving to an ergonomically designed office landscape.
This confirms other research that suggests for most of us working on screens, the distribution of light on walls and ceilings are key to alertness and room appraisal. One large-scale survey of over 1,200 workstations in 64 offices put a number on those effects, noting almost double the satisfaction with an indirect lens compared to prismatic ceiling lens (62% v 34%) and an increase in user satisfaction of 21% from a combination of indirect light fixtures with task lights – Strategies to achieve optimum visual quality for maximum occupant satisfaction: Field study findings in office buildings.
So if you want to make sure your team make the most of the time they spend in the office, it’s worth taking a look at the lighting.
Focused or friendly?
Tough negotiations in the office today?
Warm or cool lighting just might help you strike a deal. Here’s why:
1. Cool light may help you to stay awake. But it might make you more likely to pick a fight – Effects of indoor lighting (illuminance and spectral distribution) on the performance of cognitive tasks and interpersonal behaviors: The potential mediating role of positive affect.
2. You’re more likely to assign a negative emotion to faces in bright, cool light, affecting your ability to negotiate effectively – Effects of illuminance and correlated color temperature of indoor light on emotion perception.
3. But that response partly depends on your personality. If you or your colleague are self-oriented, dim, warm light is likely to bring out the best in you.
If on the other hand you look to others as a reference, brighter, cooler light will help you to do the right thing – View it in a different light: Mediated and moderated effects of dim warm light on collaborative conflict resolution.
Another reason to make sure the lighting in your office gives you some options to suit the task in hand.
Smart returns
Brilliant response to the poll about who should take ultimate responsibility for the user experience when it comes to lighting controls. In the absence of the user – who is rarely on the scene when these decisions are made, architects and lighting designers got your vote, followed by tech consultants and integrators. The RIBA Smart Buildings overlay, perhaps unsurprisingly, agrees – Smart Building Overlay to the RIBA Plan of Work.
Contractors and installers are paid to get in and get out fast, while facilities managers want tried and tested solutions – most tenants just don’t have the skills to be let loose on the controls.
You suggested consultants need to do a better job of explaining value to the building owner and then offer low-risk solutions, not shopping lists of features that will just ‘value-engineering’ down the line.
So which of these success factors do you think counts the most for clients when it comes to smart lighting controls?
Reducing trips on night time trips to the loo
Some of you may remember that my mum fell over last winter, sparking a lively debate about the potential for lighting at night to reduce falls during trips to the bathroom at night.
This week we installed a solution, thanks to Owen Basra-Hamilton at Casambi.
We used a lumileds amber strip and a wireless controller to create a simple door frame light activated by mum’s feet as she climbs out of bed.
I wanted to make sure the light didn’t wake guests too.
I think we’ve hit the spot with just 3 lux.
We will only really know if it’s worked if nothing happens!