Office Lighting Guide: 8 Things You Need To Know

Among social media, idle chatting, and other distractions, odds are that office lighting isn't on your list of distractions to quash. You probably haven't considered it at all. However, proper lighting can create an energizing environment that encourages employees to bring their best every day. In contrast, the wrong lighting can lull your workers into a mopey mood or invite eye fatigue and headaches among your ranks.

Need more convincing? Read on to learn more about the importance and potential pitfalls of office lighting and actionable ways you can brighten your employees' workdays.

Importance of Office Lighting in Workplaces

Office lighting is intrinsically tied to productivity in the workplace and employee safety. Not limited to allowing workers to see what they're reading, typing, or otherwise doing, proper LED lighting for the office tangibly impacts employee productivity and health.

Light impacts the human body in many ways, from controlling melatonin production to impacting mood, productivity, and creativity. Brightness, color temperature, glare, and shadow all play into how lighting affects workers in their specific environment.

Bright, natural light can make employees alert, energized, and ready to take on the day. Dim, warm light, on the other hand, fosters a feeling of comfort and relaxation. But if ambient lighting is too bright, it can be harsh on the eyes, cause headaches, or disrupt sleep patterns. Conversely, extra dim or warm office lighting can cause low contrast and eye strain and lull workers into a relaxed (and unproductive) state of mind.

If office lighting is so important, how do you get it right? We'll cover common lighting types, standards, color temperature, and more to help you illuminate your office and boost productivity.

Types of Office Lighting

Before we go over ground rules for office light positioning and brightness and its effects on office workers, it is important to understand the types of artificial lighting and light fixtures at your disposal. There are three basic types of lighting that provide unique benefits to worker comfort and productivity.

General lighting is the most dispersive and uniform lighting. Typically in the form of ceiling fixtures, it lights up large areas with a diffuse glow. The role of general, or ambient, lighting is to provide a steady light source for all employees.
Localized general lighting is similar to the above but focuses on a smaller area. You may use overhead fixtures in addition to ceiling fixtures to provide uniform lighting for a small conference room, cafeteria table, or other working areas for groups of employees.
Local lighting, also dubbed task lighting, increases light for a single employee's work and immediate surroundings. Desk lamps are the most common example of task lighting in the workplace and often feature power buttons and adjustable joints to give employees complete control over when and where the light is thrown.

Various light fixtures for the above types of artificial lighting give office planners control over how the light disperses throughout a workspace to achieve proper office lighting conditions that every employee needs.

Direct lighting fixtures cast all or almost all of their light downward. This provides the most light and the highest potential for glare and shadows.
Indirect lighting distributes light upward toward the ceiling. As it bounces off and reaches the work area, it provides evenly distributed brightness with less glare.
Direct-indirect lighting fixtures offer a happy medium that casts some light both up toward the ceiling and down toward the workstation. This captures the pros and cons of both direct and indirect lighting.

Standards for Office Lighting

While the number of options can be overwhelming, enough research has been done on office lighting that trial and error is unnecessary. There are specific requirements to meet when it comes to illuminating your workspace.

The ambient brightness of your space directly determines workers' ability to see computer monitors, which are much less potent than incoming sunlight. When office lighting is too bright or dim, it can be a struggle to see images and text on screens—causing eye fatigue, mistakes, and stress.

Therefore, the recommended luminance (measured in lumens) for an office is different from other workplaces or home environments. The General Services Administration laid out the following guidelines.

Ensure 500 lumens of brightness per square meter. In other words, if your typical workstation is a 6'x6' cubicle, it requires at least one 35-watt incandescent bulb for proper luminance.
Create even light distribution. Make use of general, localized general, and task lighting to create even lighting throughout each workspace, considering shadows cast by walls, partitions, monitor arms, file storage, and other obstacles.
Consider any physical barriers in the space. Cubicle walls, dividers, monitor arms, and file cabinets can all cause shadows that are distracting for employees. For situations where rearranging general or localized general lighting is impossible, task lighting can fill in gaps and minimize unwanted shadows.

Lighting for Offices With Open Environments

If you have an open floor plan, ambient office lighting plays a slightly different role than in a cubicle environment. You want the light to cascade throughout the workspace, creating a sense of collaboration among workers. You'll still want direct light for workstations themselves as well as areas of soft, dim light in hallways and break areas where employees are not meeting to conduct business.

Consider employing a range of lighting techniques to create that cohesive work-oriented space. Widely dispersed lighting from indirect sources will pull the whole room together, while direct or individual task lighting can help to fine-tune each employee's workstation to their personal needs.

Office Lighting in Relation to Computer Placement

Computer screens and monitors can be a limiting factor in office lighting. While essential to the modern business landscape, even the best screens' brightness pales in comparison to the power of the sun or even incorrectly-placed office lights. Direct light on screen-based devices can lead to eye strain, migraines and headaches, and other grievances for your employees.

Wash out - Bright lights, both artificial and natural, can easily overwhelm the relatively low brightness of modern computer screens. When this happens, content on the screen can look washed out and difficult to read.

Glare - When direct light bounces off a computer screen, glare is often the result. Glossy screens suffer more from this phenomenon than matte ones, although it can be an issue for any screen.

To solve this issue, strategically place artificial light sources behind, to the side of, or farther away from monitors and laptop screens. If natural light is the issue, ensure desk placement is perpendicular to or away from problematic windows.

Color and Temperature of Office Lighting

Electric lighting varies in its color spectrum and reflection properties, affecting how we see our environment as it bounces off objects and reaches our eyes. Research shows that the color temperature of lighting conditions affects how we as humans work, with cooler light promoting productivity.

Breaking it down, light emitted in the warm color spectrum includes colors like orange and yellow and is perfect for creating a calm and comforting environment of relaxation. Cooler light has more white and blue tones, reducing melatonin production in the brain and, in turn, boosting alertness, mood, and productivity.

While better for alertness, prolonged exposure to cool light can be fatiguing. That's why office lighting that closely emulates natural sunlight—welcoming but still cool in color—is perfect for encouraging productivity among workers. Even better, the lightning in your workplace should start cooler in the morning and gradually shift to warmer hues as the day progresses and employees wind down.

Best Bulbs Used for Office Lighting

Many offices use fluorescent light bulbs due to their high energy efficiency and decent color rendering (how faithfully an object's true colors appear as light bounces off objects and into the human eye). Fluorescent bulbs are cheap and throw light in the blue and white spectrum, making them suitable for morning productivity.

Other electric lighting options, like incandescent bulbs, are available but less desirable due to a high cost to operate despite good color rendering. However, there's another option that all offices should consider: LED lighting.

As you consider lighting options for your office, weigh the pros and cons of fluorescent and LED lights. While fluorescent lighting is more ubiquitous because the technology is older and well-integrated into business infrastructure, LED lighting is the brighter option for myriad reasons. We break it down below.

Compared to their fluorescent counterparts, LED bulbs:

are more efficient and economical to maintain
last longer and don't use excess energy from infrared radiation
don't flicker, which can cause migraines in those who are predisposed
are dimmable to match every situation
don't inhibit melatonin production or interrupt sleep patterns when appropriately dimmed

Energy Consumption for Office Lights

LED lights cost slightly more than fluorescent lights at the outset but save money in the long run. In addition to using less energy from moment to moment, they also last longer, leading to less frequent spending on replacement bulbs. They've enjoyed recent popularity as the more energy-efficient option, allowing businesses to stay illuminated for less.

Whether moving into a new building or retrofitting an existing office with better lighting, it's advantageous to consider LED lighting and follow the above guidelines for higher employee productivity. Look through our selection of LED indoor lights and find the right match for your office needs!

Article Written by Andrew S.

Andrew is a Product Marketing Specialist. He aims to bring innovative, high-quality lighting to the market that provides a solution to customers’ needs. By keeping the consumer front of mind, he focuses on providing superior customer service and competitive pricing and delivering the best overall experience and value straight to the consumer.