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.