Category: Education

In the ever-evolving world of business, one factor stays constant: the importance of the human element. As companies strive to create a conducive and inspiring work environment, the concept of human centric office design has gained traction. Emphasising the well-being and productivity of employees, this approach redefines traditional office spaces and fosters a harmonious balance between aesthetics and functionality.

A Holistic Approach to Office Design

The essence of human centric office design lies in acknowledging the unique needs and preferences of employees. Gone are the days of cookie-cutter cubicles and sterile settings. Today, successful businesses prioritise a holistic approach that revolves around employee comfort and happiness.

This design philosophy considers several factors, such as natural lighting, ergonomic furniture, temperature control, noise reduction, and air quality. By thoughtfully integrating these elements, employers create a nurturing environment that allows employees to flourish.

The Power of Natural Light

Incorporating ample natural light is at the core of human centric office design. Sunlight not only supplies essential vitamin D but also significantly affects mood and productivity. Designing offices with large windows and open spaces not only reduces reliance on artificial lighting but also connects employees with the external environment, fostering a sense of unity with nature.

However, the quest for the perfect balance between natural and artificial lighting doesn’t end with the sun’s rays. Human centric office design also embraces the concept of circadian lighting. Inspired by the natural progression of daylight throughout the day, circadian lighting systems simulate these changes to mimic the body’s internal clock.

Ergonomics: Putting Comfort First

Long hours spent at desks can lead to various health issues. However, ergonomic office furniture can help mitigate these problems. From adjustable chairs and sit-stand desks to wrist-supporting keyboards, investing in ergonomic solutions ensures the well-being of employees and minimises discomfort or strain caused by extended periods of sitting.

Striking the Right Balance: Noise and Privacy

Office chatter and constant distractions can hamper concentration and creativity. Human centric office design incorporates acoustic solutions that reduce noise levels and provide employees with a sense of privacy. This can range from acoustic panels on walls and ceilings to appointed quiet spaces for focused work or rejuvenating breaks.

Air Quality and Indoor Plants

Clean and fresh air is essential for cognitive function and overall health. Installing efficient ventilation systems and incorporating indoor plants can significantly improve air quality. Plants not only enhance aesthetics but also function as natural air purifiers, absorbing harmful pollutants and emitting oxygen, contributing to a healthier work environment.

Flexibility and Collaboration

Human centric office design also emphasises the importance of flexible workspaces that cater to different work styles. Incorporating collaborative areas, cosy corners, and open meeting spaces encourages teamwork, creativity, and idea sharing. Employees feel empowered to choose the setting that best suits their tasks, promoting a sense of autonomy and efficiency.

Colour Psychology and Mood Enhancement

The careful choice of colours can influence mood and productivity. Warm colours like yellow and orange can evoke feelings of energy and enthusiasm, while cool colours like blue and green promote calmness and focus. Human-centric office design takes advantage of colour psychology to create an emotionally balanced workplace that motivates employees throughout the day.

In the United Kingdom, as elsewhere in the world, human centric office design is transforming the traditional workplace into an inspiring and supportive environment. By considering the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of employees, businesses are realising that investing in their workforce pays off manifold. A happy and motivated workforce leads to increased productivity, reduced turnover, and a positive company culture. Embrace human-centric office design and see the transformative impact it can have on your organisation’s success.

Glare can cause eye strain, leading to headaches and fatigue in employees, so it is essential to consider it when undertaking a lighting design. The specification for office lighting in the UK is to have a UGR (Unified Glare Rating) of less than 19, as per EN12464.

But what is glare?

The CIE defines glare as:

“Visual conditions in which there is excessive contrast or an inappropriate distribution of light sources that disturbs the observer or limits the ability to distinguish details and objects”.

What does this mean in real life? An excellent practical example of glare can be given by considering a car coming towards you on a country lane, with its headlights on full beam. If this was in the middle of a sunny summer day, you probably wouldn’t think anything of it.

However, consider the same set of circumstances on a dark winters evening. As the car passes you, for a split second you can’t see anything. This is disability glare. You cannot see the target (the road ahead) due to an “inappropriate distribution of light source that limits the ability to distinguish details and objects”. The reason this causes an issue is because our eyes are unable to dilate the pupils enough to allow enough light in to be able to see the darkness of the roadway, while at the same time being contracted enough to accommodate the brightness of the headlight. So we can see that glare is caused by the contrast between the brightness of the light source and the background lighting level.

How can we mitigate this in an office environment? Well, background luminance levels are affected by the reflectance of surfaces within the room – not just the walls, floor and ceiling, but desks and other furniture too.

The distribution of the luminaires can also have an effect. Luminaires that put light onto the ceiling (suspended direct/indirect, floor standing or wall mounted up lighters) will increase the luminance of the ceiling, which in turn will reduce the contrast between the ceiling and the light-emitting surface of the luminaire.

Continuing on with our example, if the car was waiting to pull out of a side road with its full beams on, there may be no glare issues at all – in either day or nighttime examples.

If we take this thought process into an office setting, the position of the fitting would relate to its mounting height and spacing in between luminaires. It’s quite possible that at the design stage, the desk layout may not have been finalised, and so the position of the luminaires in relation to where people will be working may be unknown so this can be trickier to allow for.

As we can see, it is not the light source itself that can comply with any glare rating, because other factors have an effect as well. So, although a luminaire may be designed for its distribution to be low glare, on its own it cannot claim to be UGR<19.

Diffuser options

Opal diffusers will not control the direction of light output in any way. They will do exactly as their name suggests – diffuse the light in all directions. Diffusers with a prism, potentially either embossed. or screen printed on, will control the light, and will direct more of the light downwards, and less out at higher angles:

The left-hand side of this image shows the polar curve of our Polaris 52 luminaire with opal diffuser. The right-hand side shows the polar curve of our Polaris 52 with low glare option. As you can see, the low glare version as almost zero output in the region 45 – 90 degrees from the normal. This light has been re-directed downwards. The opal version is just a blob of light that comes out of the diffuser, with no control and no directionality to the distribution. I have highlighted the angle higher than 30 degrees in blue, to help show this.

As you can see from this image, if you have less light coming out at higher angles, the observer will have less light in their eye line from the fittings further away. In addition, older computer monitors with curved glass screens would have reflected light in this zone from fittings behind the observer. Although most offices are equipped with flat panel, matt computer screens which do not give unwanted reflections, it could still be an issue for laptops and tablets – however, the user will have much more flexibility in changing their screen position and angle to remove the reflections as required.

Luminance above 65 degrees

In addition to UGR < 19 in offices, EN12464 also states that luminaires should have a luminance of <3000 candelas / m² at angles of above 65 degrees from the normal, for areas with positive polarity screens. Unlike UGR, luminance is a function of the luminaire itself, and is not affected in anyway by the properties of the environment that it is installed in. Lighting design programs such as Relux display this data for luminaires:

The highest luminance value is highlighted with square brackets and is 2935 cd/m² for the Visual Comfort version of our Polaris 52.

Glare and luminance are very involved topics. How glare is calculated, or estimated if using the tabular method, and the limitations of both, need a standalone article.

The takeaways from this overview are:

• A luminaire on its own cannot comply with any UGR rating
• To reduce glare, increase the background lighting level
  • Incorporate uplighting
  • Have light-coloured room surfaces & furniture to increase reflectance
• UGR cannot be measured – there is no such thing as a glare meter.
• A luminaire can comply with the luminance limits, regardless of the environment it is put in.

To understand the importance of colour rendering, we first need to understand how we see colour.

When we look at an object, the colour that we perceive it to be depends on two things:

1. The colour of the object itself (the car, food, painting or book, for example)
2. The colour rendering ability of the light that is hitting the object.

The object will only reflect the wavelength (colour) of light that is the same colour as the object itself. For example, red surfaces will only reflect red – the other colours in the light are absorbed by the surface, so the only light that our eyes receive is red and so our brain recognises that the object is red.

White surfaces will reflect all wavelengths of light.

Black surfaces will absorb all wavelengths, and reflect none.

This is a chart showing the colours that would be reflected from a green apple, and from a strawberry:

Notice that both objects reflect the infra red at the right hand side of the chart

Because of how we see colour, for a light source to be able to render the colour of an object – that colour must be in the light source. If the light source has colours missing, or at very low levels, then objects won’t be able to reflect that wavelength, and so the colours of the objects you are looking at will appear dull, muted and of low saturation.

Traditional low pressure sodium streetlights are a very visible example of this. Because there is no other wavelength of light apart from orange in the source, if you see a blue, green or red car under those conditions, then all those cars would look a murky brown colour. White cars look slightly orange, as do yellow cars.

These streetlights have a low colour rendering index – they do not show colours anywhere near how they would be viewed under daylight conditions because they only give out orange light. Streetlights are being changed over to LED sources across the country, and the difference in how the two light sources render colour is shown nicely in images like these:

This is a very visual example, but there are other light sources which may appear white, but might have low levels of certain wavelengths in, which could affect how we perceive certain colours. If you have read the article about How LED’s Work, that explains that LEDs create blue light and pass this through a phosphor to spread the energy throughout the visible spectrum. The LED and phosphor have to work in tandem to ensure that the visible wavelengths are created correctly to ensure sufficient quality of light throughout the entire visible spectrum.

What is the Colour Rendering Index?

To rate the quality of light, and compare the quality of light between sources, the Colour Rendering Index (CRI) was created. The Colour Rendering Index shows the ability of a light source to accurately represent the colour of an object in relation to daylight. The “Commission Internationale de l’éclairage” (CIE) introduced colour rendering and used the colours below as the test palette. If the source under test renders the colour identically to how daylight renders it, then it will have a CRI value of 100 for that colour.

The results of the first 8 colours are averaged, to give the Colour Rendering Index, or Ra value. The remaining 7 colours are known as the “Extended CRI” these are used very infrequently.

You notice that the first 8 colours are all pastel shades, and not strong, saturated colours like some of the extended CRI colours. Because of this there are arguments that CRI is not an accurate way to represent a light sources colour rendering ability, and so alternative methods have been proposed, such as TM30, which we will cover in a later post.

For general office illumination, BS EN12464-1-2021 specifies a colour rendering index for luminaires to be Ra > 80.

In other projects, the level of required colour rendering may vary depending on the area that is being worked on. An art gallery would require a higher colour rendering index than car park for example, so that the art works can be shown in the most accurate way.

The concept of a circular economy has gained significant traction in recent years as a sustainable alternative to the traditional linear model of “take-make-dispose.” The circular economy aims to keep resources in use for as long as possible by designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. This approach has far-reaching implications for businesses and industries, including the role it can play in creating sustainable workplaces.

The traditional linear economy model produces vast amounts of waste and pollution, putting a significant strain on natural resources and ecosystems. In contrast, a circular economy emphasises the importance of sustainable resource management, encouraging businesses to consider the full life cycle of products, including design, production, use, and disposal. By doing so, it can reduce the amount of waste generated, create new value streams, and reduce the environmental impact of production and consumption.

One of the key benefits of adopting circular economy principles in the workplace is the potential to create more sustainable operations. By implementing closed-loop systems that promote the reuse, refurbishment, and recycling of materials, businesses can reduce their reliance on virgin resources and minimise waste. This can have a significant impact on both the environment and the bottom line, as reducing waste can lead to cost savings and improved efficiency.

Additionally, adopting circular practices in the workplace can create new business opportunities and revenue streams. For example, businesses can explore product-as-a-service models, where customers pay for access to products instead of owning them, leading to longer product lifetimes and reduced waste. Another example is exploring remanufacturing and refurbishment services, which can create new jobs and extend the life of products while reducing waste and lowering costs.

The circular economy also offers opportunities for collaboration and partnership, both within and between businesses. Adopting circular practices requires a shift in mindset and a willingness to work together to create closed-loop systems. This can lead to collaborations with suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders to improve the sustainability of supply chains and reduce environmental impact.

Circular economy principles can be applied in various ways in the workplace, from product design to waste management. Here are some of the ways that the circular economy can help create sustainable workplaces:

• Product Design: The principles of circular economy can be applied to the design of products to make them more sustainable. This can be done by using materials that can be easily reused, recycled, or biodegraded at the end of their life cycle. Designing products for durability, repairability, and upgradability can also extend their lifespan.
• Material Efficiency: Adopting circular economy principles can also help in reducing the amount of material needed to produce a product. By using materials efficiently, businesses can reduce their input costs while simultaneously reducing their environmental impact. For example, using digital technologies to minimise paper usage, or redesigning product packaging to use less material.
• Waste Reduction: Reducing the amount of waste generated by businesses can be achieved by implementing waste reduction strategies such as recycling and composting, using closed-loop systems for water and other resources, and implementing sustainable supply chain practices.
• Energy Efficiency: Improving energy efficiency in the workplace can be done by investing in energy-efficient equipment, implementing energy management systems, and promoting energy-saving behaviors among employees.
• Resource Recovery: Businesses can adopt strategies such as industrial symbiosis, where waste materials from one company are used as inputs by another company. This can create a closed-loop system where waste is turned into a valuable resource.

The circular economy offers a promising pathway for creating more sustainable workplaces. By adopting circular principles, businesses can reduce waste, conserve resources, and create new revenue streams, while also contributing to a more sustainable and resilient future. As such, it is important for businesses to recognise the potential of the circular economy and to actively explore how it can be integrated into their operations to create more sustainable and resilient workplaces.