Proceedings of: Workshop on Improving Building Design for Persons with Low Vision

Lighting Performance

So I think we can do that and still not have our lighting levels be dramatically different or not have them use spotlights to make things bleary and confusing. And also, as someone talked about earlier, you just have perimeter lighting sort of like this (slide 14), where you have all these [sconce lighting fixtures].

There were a number of slides we saw today where the tops of the walls were really dark (slide 15). It made the hall space look smaller and lower. And there’s a lot of recess perimeter lighting that just gives you a wash down that wall. It’s inexpensive lighting to run, but we [have alternatives that are] a lot less expensive than they are.

But you can just come in early in a job. You can design it into the architecture and not have to buy all those fixtures. So you can get a lot of good perimeter lighting without having to start adding things later (slides 16 and 17). And that’s a huge advantage to coming in early.

Another thing I wanted to point out is lighting has a lot to do with our sense of security. I have gone back to projects, even recently a project I did where I was above the IES standard for lighting for the public restrooms, but it was a facility where people didn’t know each other and there wasn’t a community where the same people were always there, and they didn’t feel comfortable in the restrooms because of the lighting level. It was easy to add some more lighting, so we did.

There was a study done where there was one person at a table, and someone would come in, like, over in another part of the room, and they would fill out a questionnaire. They thought the questionnaire was what the study was on. The study was actually on lighting. But then they were asked to turn their questionnaire in to the person at the table, and there were only that subject and the person at the table.

If the lighting level was low, they would kind of reach and put it on the table, and they would not come close to the person at the table. They wanted to keep their distance. If the lighting level was higher, they would come right up there and they would talk to the person at the table and feel more comfortable.

So I think if we keep lowering our lighting levels, we don’t feel as safe. We don’t feel as secure. We’re a little more frightened of using public spaces in places we don’t know people. There’s psychological affects as well as the safety affects.