General lighting considerations

Office lighting has two aspects – daylight and artificial lighting.

Good lighting can bring job satisfaction and well-being, whereas poor lighting can ultimately result in an office that does not function.

The motivation and well-being of employees thus depends on good lighting.

There is no universal approach to creating correct lighting – optimum lighting can only be achieved by taking into account the special features of each location.

There is legislation on lighting, but in addition to the legislation you should follow common sense and a simple set of rules:

For daylight conditions, the window area must be a minimum of 10% of the floor area, or there must be a skylight area of a minimum of 7% plus a view to the outside through the façade.

Each working environment has three types of lighting:

General lighting
This is the basic lighting that allows people to orientate themselves in the building without bumping into furniture, equipment, etc. In technical terms, the basic lighting level in an office environment should be an average of 300 Lux. This level of light should be supplemented by the other two types of lighting described below.

It is essential to ensure that the basic lighting is carefully designed and situated to avoid reflections and glare.

Focus light
Focus light is the light that you have over e.g. a desk or another defined work area. It is highly individual how different people experience good focus light, but as a starting point the lighting must be 500 Lux, incl. basic lighting, measured at desktop level.

The option to individually adjust the focus light is important.

Ambient light
Using ambient light, it is possible to add spatial experiences to any kind of building. It may be by using a spotlight on a plant or picture, or just some cones of light on a wall.

Planning
When planning the lighting of large office areas, several considerations must be made, e.g. choice of light sources, energy consumption, control of artificial light compared to daylight, zone division, dimmers, etc. In general, the legislation of Danish Standard 700 (or equivalent in other countries) should be followed.

Often it is not difficult to have a calculation of the lighting made beforehand, and this is something that most consultants and vendors can do. However, to get a head start it is a good idea for the client to take a look around and determine whether there are similar office areas or rooms that are nice to work in.

The experience of alternative lighting sources such as uplights/downlights, halogen lights, PL tubes, etc., can form the basis for good discussion, leading to the correct choice of lighting.

In relation to office layouts at Novo Nordisk, a number of different, exciting lighting assignments have been carried out in cooperation between the client and NNE. We recommend that you take a look at some of these new designs – see References.