LED Lighting in Offices

Most of us spend about one-third of our lifetime inside buildings while at work — that’s an average of approximately 90,000 hours under some form of artificial lighting. And it’s important for office and facility managers to know that the type of lighting chosen to illuminate any workspace can have a big impact on things like worker productivity, energy consumption and even corporate responsibility.

What’s so exciting is that with recent developments in LED lighting, the benefits of using this versatile form of lighting in offices are promising to have profound and lasting effects on our modern workspaces.

Professional Office Lighting Design

Recent studies have uncovered some astounding statistics as they relate to worker productivity and office lighting design. In one study by the American Society of Interior Designers, an overwhelming 68 percent of office employees reported that they were concerned poor lighting was having a negative impact on their performance. In another study out of Cornell University, nearly a quarter of all workers cited poor and insufficient lighting as the prime reason for eyestrain and a loss of work that added up to an average of one week of lost productivity each year.

The same Cornell study found that employee productivity could be bolstered by anywhere from three to five percent simply by having offices switch to LED lighting. The reasons for this phenomenon are many, but it all begins with the primary differences between the harshness of incandescent and fluorescent light sources compared to light emitted from commercial LED lights.

The Benefits of LED Lighting

When it comes to factors ranging from enhancing workers’ health and productivity to saving on energy and lighting disposal costs, LED lighting offers the following benefits:

• Directional lighting: Unlike traditional bulbs that emit light omnidirectionally and cast light in directions that aren’t useful or are even distracting to workers, LED lights cast their light in a specific direction and without any flickering. This difference makes them the ideal light source to reduce eyestrain and provide clear illumination.
• Tunable lighting: With the lighting control system, LED lighting can be changed subtly throughout the day to mimic different color temperatures in order to better support our natural circadian rhythms. With LED lighting, everything from a cool to a warm white daylight is possible and tunable.
• Daylight harvesting: Because you can tune LED lighting to different levels, it’s the perfect light source to work in conjunction with daylight harvesting, which turns down artificial light sources as much as possible when natural light is available. Through both open and closed loop controls, LED lighting is the versatile light source you want working with your sensors.
• Energy efficiency: While LED lighting might cost more initially, it uses up to 80 percent less power than traditional lighting and lasts approximately 25 percent longer. In one instance alone, the City of Los Angeles reported a total annual savings in excess of $5 million after switching street lights to LEDs.
• Corporate responsibility: Because LED lighting produces no wasteful heat, lasts far longer and contains no toxic chemicals, it also helps the environment, which is something many corporations are keen to bring to the attention of their stakeholders and the general public.

Illuminated Integration — Your Commercial LED Lighting Specialist

Illuminated Integration is a full-service audio, visual and lighting (AVL) supplier with decades of combined in-house experience. To learn more about how we can provide solutions for all your LED lighting needs — from design through to installation — fill out our contact form, and a member of our lighting team will be in touch shortly.