Lighting Organisational Measures

1. Maximise the use of daylight    

Organise your office to maximise the use of daylight and, thereby, reduce the usage of electric lighting in rooms. When planning an office, working zones, communal areas and corridors should clearly be defined and planned in a way that working zones receive the maximum daylight possible. This will not only lead to a higher satisfaction of the employees working in the building but will also reduce energy costs.

2. Make lighting control as "local" as possible light bulbs   

Apart from general lighting systems in corridors etc. your staff should be given the possibility to control lighting at the point of use - this increases satisfaction, wellbeing and energy savings.

By using a combination of general area lighting together with locally switched task lighting, energy savings of up to 20 % are possible when compared with a regular array of luminaries providing the full luminance.

3. Use a number of lights to achieve greater control   

If you have different circuits controlling the lights in different zones of a room you have greater flexibility to only illuminate the lights actually needed.

4. Liaise with cleaning staff    

Outside of normal office hours, there will be times when lighting is needed for cleaning duties.

If the lighting is not automatically controlled, the cleaning staff should be encouraged to light only the areas where cleaning is currently undertaken.

If the building has a form of time controlled lighting then the lighting pattern should reflect the cleaning schedules of the cleaning staff.

5. Use light coloured walls and ceilings    

Paint the surfaces of the rooms (including the ceiling) with matt colours of high reflectance to maximise the effectiveness of the light output.

Light/bright colours can reflect up to 80 % of incident light; dark/deep colours can reflect less than 10 % of incident light.

6. Think about an illumination concept for a new installation   

When setting up a new office think about the light requirements at the beginning of the planning phase and develop an illumination concept to ensure sufficient and satisfactory lighting of the area by maximising the use of daylight in working areas and by taking into account energy efficiency criteria.

7. Think about a lighting control system when planning a new premise    

In many cases, substantial savings can be achieved using fully or partly automatic lighting control systems.

The cost effectiveness depends heavily on the availability of daylight and on the occupancy pattern of the lit space.

A full system would combine one or more of the following sub-systems:

Time Control Systems:
For greatest benefit timed control systems will switch lights off according to a specified schedule, with the occupants using an overriding control to switch lights on. To optimise the use of daylight, those fittings nearest to the windows should also be controlled according to the amount of daylight available.

Occupancy-linked Control Systems:
These systems use some form of presence detection, usually ultrasonic, infrared, microwave or acoustic to control luminaries. They usually switch lighting on when occupancy is detected and off again once they have failed to detect an occupant for a set time. Occupancy-linked Control Systems are most appropriate in store areas, corridors and toilets.

Daylight-linked Control Systems:
This type of control is based on a series of photocells and can be used to switch lighting off when daylight is adequate. Recent developments have led to the introduction of dimming controllers that maintain a constant lighting level by dimming luminaries to balance the available daylight.

Localised Switching:
Localised switching is important where only part of a large space requires the electric lighting to be on, either because the other parts are unoccupied or because certain areas have adequate daylight.