Office lighting: Bright bulbs for bright minds

What is the right lighting for the office?

According to experts, the optimum workplace in lighting terms would be outdoors, beneath a loose blanket of slowly drifting clouds. A new, still very expensive light tile system for office ceilings can recreate this ideal scenario. The ceiling is fitted with large-format LED screens that can simulate daylight on the one hand and display content on the other. This makes both functional lighting and the imitation of a lightly clouded summer sky possible.

LED lighting in the workplace creates pleasant, well-designed office lighting. It is ideal not only for illuminating offices, but also clinics – in fact, anywhere that daylight is needed. The light intensity these systems are capable of is genuinely impressive: they can currently deliver 20,000 lux, which is roughly comparable to summer daylight. As with any technology that is still far from widespread use, the same applies here: these systems are still quite expensive for end consumers. For now, it is definitely more affordable to apply the principles of ideal workplace lighting using a bit of common sense and some basic knowledge of physics and colour theory.
Although the focus below will be on working at a office chair , the basic principle is not much different in skilled trades: a tailor should place their sewing machine in a good light just as a carpenter should do the same with their workbench. 

What should I look out for - what defines good office lighting?

Different values apply to different areas in the office: if a workstation is positioned directly by the window, a brightness level of 300 lux is required. The further it is moved towards the centre of the room or to an interior wall, the requirement rises to 500 to 1000 lux. Background: the illuminance level “lux” is calculated from the quotient of the luminous intensity of a point light source in “candela” and the square of the distance in metres. One “candela” is roughly the brightness emitted by a candle – measured in lux, a candle at a distance of two metres would produce 0.25 lux. So you would need quite a large candelabra to achieve legally compliant lighting in an office.

Office workers have a much easier time if they rely on modern technology instead.

In addition to natural daylight, ceiling lights create pleasant indirect lighting. LED ceiling panels are also frequently used for a room’s general lighting. Concealed LED strips and bands also give the room a pleasant ambience.
However, if you need more focused light for manually working on documents, a separate desk lamp can help. Make sure, however, that it does not dazzle you during use, either directly or through reflections. Floor lamps or other mobile light sources can also be used for this purpose. 

If you prefer real plants to artificial plants, an additional plant lamp can be used. It provides your greenery with the necessary UV light and creates a pleasant, modern room ambience.

Energy-saving LED bulbs or fluorescent tubes with the light colour “neutral white” or “daylight white” come closest to natural light. These light sources combined with large windows that let in plenty of natural daylight, plus an individually adjustable desk lamp, are the best combination. Another step intended to bring daylight into enclosed spaces is OLED, the “organic light-emitting diode”. Unlike its inorganic counterpart, the inorganic light-emitting diode (LED), it can be manufactured using thin-film technology. Anyone who owns a smartphone, tablet or modern flatscreen already has such an OLED: they are used in screen lighting. Because they generate only a small amount of heat, they can also be integrated as a light source into building materials, for example in wood or ceiling panels. 

In principle, a distinction is made between three light colours or colour temperatures:

Warm white:  The bronze-shimmering light ranges between 2,700 and 3,300 Kelvin and gives off a somewhat dim glow that creates a cosy ambience in the room. However, it is important to note that this is not task lighting. Warm white light is more commonly found in living rooms or bedrooms, where the atmosphere should be correspondingly relaxing. 

Neutral white: This slightly cooler-looking light starts at 3,300 Kelvin and goes up to 5,300 Kelvin. Neutral white light is found mainly in bathrooms.

Daylight white: With a Kelvin value between 5,300 and 7,500, this light colour appears rather bright and is mainly used in offices, kitchens and utility rooms where you also carry out more delicate tasks.

The three colour temperatures also reflect the lighting conditions throughout the day. At sunrise, the light is warm white, in the morning neutral white, and at midday it reaches a Kelvin value corresponding to daylight white.

The right mix matters: As already mentioned, one of the most important principles is the mix of direct and indirect light. You can achieve this through the interplay of daylight and artificial light. If your office is generally too dark, daylight lamps used as ceiling panels can help simulate natural daylight.

Don't let glare affect you: It is also necessary to avoid glare and reflections so as not to strain your eyes unnecessarily. Due to impaired vision and the resulting poor posture, glare can even lead to skeletal problems. Even a white  desk in bright midday sun can cause this. A stylish desk mat is a good option here, as it can help prevent glare. So make sure your workspace is evenly lit and avoid shadows.

Adjust the light intensity to suit your activities: It should go without saying that not every task requires direct lighting. If you work on a PC or laptop, a little indirect lighting is enough to reduce contrast between light and dark and thus ease the strain on your eyes.

Align the lighting with your biorhythm:  Did you know that our biorhythm adapts to the time of day? Our sleep-wake cycle is determined by a light-dark rhythm and is guided by the seasons and sunrise and sunset. That is why many people also find it difficult to sleep when it is light outside. These people usually become tired as soon as it gets dark. This happens because melatonin is produced in the body when the brightness decreases. By contrast, in the morning we become awake and productive thanks to the serotonin produced and the stress hormone cortisol.

In summary: It is all about the right interplay of natural and artificial light as well as direct and indirect light. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for office lighting: the way light is perceived is and remains a personal matter – older employees need a little more light than younger ones.

What influence does lighting have?

Lighting in the office not only affects our physical and mental well-being, but also has a direct impact on our work itself. However, poor lighting does not just impair our productivity. Other consequences include rapid fatigue, lack of productivity and eye problems; in the long term, it can even lead to impaired vision or depression. You should know that working at a computer in particular places a great strain on the eyes. While you have to focus on a fixed surface at close range for a long period of time, you must also remain constantly tense and compensate for the difference between screen brightness and the brightness of your surroundings. While the physical damage is obvious to everyone, the emotional aspect needs a small example: some people are more prone than others to gradually becoming gloomy during the winter months. According to common expert opinion, the reason is that the human body also falls into a kind of hibernation in order to save energy. The side effect is a general low mood, commonly known as winter depression. Following this logic, it cannot be healthy to spend eight or more hours a day in semi-darkness all year round.

The negative effects caused by poor office lighting have already been made clear. By contrast, the right office lighting can significantly improve work performance. Plenty of daylight and optional glare protection, combined with direct and indirect artificial task lighting, reduce eye strain, support efficient working and encourage a healthy posture. In addition to benefiting employees' health, ergonomic lighting also boosts their satisfaction and concentration. What's more, a well-thought-out lighting concept can lead to considerable cost savings for the company. 

The effect of light on the human body has been clearly proven. Natural sunlight is the best light for people. It improves both concentration and alertness, which inevitably leads to better work performance. Good lighting in the office not only improves motivation, it also means employees are off sick less often. Overall, it therefore has a positive effect on the company.

Good lighting is also a question of furnishing

The furnishing and office equipment can also be a decisive factor when it comes to lighting: if, for example, a desk surface reflects light, even monitors or ceiling lights with minimal glare will be of no help. Compared with bright rooms, daylight cannot fully illuminate darker rooms. Of course, that does not mean our offices have to look sterile-bright like a dentist's surgery. Light colours and low-reflection surfaces can also mean walls painted in pastel shades or light woods. A frosted glass table in front of a light grey wall is also ideal for a modern office. So if you have good lighting at your workplace – whether at home or in the office – you have already got most things right. But if you want to perfect the subject of “lighting”, you should also have a little understanding of the effect of light colours.

Because different rules apply in break rooms than in offices or conference rooms, not only when dealing with colleagues. Different light colours have been proven to affect the human body in different ways. And your own instincts already tell you quite a lot: nobody would bolt a xenon lamp to the ceiling in their living room at home in order to perceive the room clearly in its cold blue glow, while feeling inclined to leave it as quickly as possible. 

Just as warm light colours should be used in the home, the lighting in break rooms should also subtly signal “cosy”. A slightly orange light colour, for example, would be a good choice for a break room or creative space: orange stands for optimism and joy of life and encourages creative thinking and sociability. Blue light represents calm and promotes communication and clear thinking – making it a good choice for office lighting. And red? Red stands for love, passion and anger, so it does not really belong in the office. Used selectively as an accent light, it boosts vitality. But if you overdo the red-light effect in office lighting, as mentioned, you are likely to become quite restless.

But it is not only the light colour and the technology used for office lighting that matter. Taking the architecture into account helps too: desks should be positioned with the short side facing the window, in other words extending “into the room”, so that daylight falls onto the monitor from the left or right-hand side. There should not be a lamp hanging directly above the desk, but ideally two; one on the left and the other on the right above the person working.

Are there any regulations for office lighting?

Companies must comply with various legal regulations and standards. These include DIN EN 12464-1, the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Workplace Ordinance (ArbStättV). For employers, legal requirements ensure at least the basic conditions they must meet in this regard for their employees, whereas for the self-employed the situation is often still rather unclear. Home office workers too (see also the article Working from home: at home in the office instead of in the office at home) often walk straight into a problem that could be avoided with a few logical considerations and simple measures: with dim office lighting they strain their eyes, suffer from poor posture because they spend virtually eight hours a day avoiding light reflections – or become restless because they use the cosy warm light temperature typical of living spaces at their workstation as well, alongside their office furniture . Office lighting is, of course, also regulated by law: the “Ordinance on Safety and Health Protection when Working with Display Screen Equipment” and the “Workplace Ordinance”, which can be viewed on the website of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, provide information.