LRC Publishes Guidance on Circadian-Effective Lighting

The Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., recently published new guidance documents for designing circadian-effective lighting in K-12 classrooms and hospital rooms while avoiding increased energy use.

“With increased importance given to the health-related effects of lighting in many applications – especially in education and healthcare – the design community finds itself with a new challenge of delivering sufficient vertical illuminance for circadian stimulation without dramatically increasing lighting power demand,” says Charles Jarboe, a research scientist at the LRC and one of the lead authors of the guidance documents. “But providing energy-efficient and healthy lighting does not have to be an either-or proposition.”

The guidance documents provide background information and summaries of recent research into the benefits of lighting for circadian entrainment for K-12 students and hospital patients. The primary aim of the publications is to offer guidance for achieving effective, healthy lighting solutions in both applications while limiting increased energy use to the greatest extent possible.

For circadian entrainment and improvements in sleep quality and psychological health, high daytime light levels at the eye are necessary, followed by low evening/nighttime light levels in order to achieve a robust 24-hour light-dark pattern. However, the recommended light levels in K-12 classrooms and for general (non-exam) lighting in hospital patient rooms are generally too low for daytime circadian stimulation. Providing the necessary light levels using design strategies typically intended to deliver illuminance to the horizontal workplane (as opposed to vertical illuminance at the eye) can have the unwanted result of increasing energy use compared to lighting installations designed with only visual performance in mind.

For more information, read the original press release or download the free guidance documents.