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About Task Lighting
About Task Lighting - Lighting for Office, Illuminating Focused Work Areas
- Efficient lighting can positively impact working effectiveness, efficiency and ergonomic well-being
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These
individual lamps offer high level lighting focused on specific
areas for reading materials or items that are difficult
to see for some reason. They are placed near or above that
work area needing illumination without casting glare and
minimizing shadows. Typically, these lamps allow adjustment
in the direction and level of the light itself. They're
useful in business offices, home offices, and also for various
other specific tasks. The lamps can utilize any one of a
variety of bulb types, such as incandescent, compact fluorescent,
halogen, LED, full spectrum, or other specialized types.
These individual lamps are not meant to replace ambient
lighting sources, however. They are supplemental lighting
for office work and meant to focus on specific tasks and
provide increased user comfort and efficiency. A study
performed by Cornell University in the late 1990s found
eyestrain to be the number one office complaint in the study
groups. The workers stated a desire for more control over
the lighting for office work. Just as it is possible to
have too much light in an office, it is also possible to
not have sufficient lighting. Using an individual, adjustable
placement lamp provides an answer.
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Ideally the changes between task luminance and illumination
of immediate surroundings should be gradual thereby avoiding
harsh contrasts. Different
work projects require different illumination.
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Whether incandescent bulb, banks of fluorescent tubes,
recessed down lights, or natural light from windows,
ambient light may be explained as being the general
lighting of an area that softens contrasts between
different areas in a room. Typically, this office
lighting design is inefficient as the bulbs produce too
much light and glare for many of the tasks being
performed, while some areas of the desk are not
receiving a sufficient amount. According to a study by
the IES (Illuminating Engineers Society of North
America), the lighting levels required for certain
desktop tasks required 20% to 25% higher lighting than
other office space. For example, reading the screen of a
computer monitor requires 5 times less light than
reading a paper document. For computer-based office
workers, the single source ambient office light
typically "over lights" computer work areas while their
paper work may be clear and comfortable to read. This
situation can produce physical discomfort for the worker
as well as waste electricity while increasing a
company's energy costs. Energy waste includes the
production of environmental impacts due to excessive
waste products being released by power plants.
By simply lowering the ambient light in the office and
placing adjustable position task lights in critical
areas, employees can focus lighting when and where it is
most needed -- on paper documents to which they must
refer or type from. However, this does not mean that the
office's ambient lighting should be turned off and
replaced by task illumination so that the overall
environment is dark. This creates too significant of a
contrast, and working for long periods in darkened
lighting conditions can lead to the development of
eyestrain and employee fatigue.
Combining the use of a task
lighting fixture while lowering other room lighting
(either through dimmers, additional on-off control, or
simply removing some bulbs) can also reduce the
electrical costs. This energy saving can be increased
dramatically by utilizing energy saving bulbs in all
lighting fixtures, such as those that have earned the
ENERGY STAR qualification.
These methods also answer
the desire of workers to be more in control of their
office lighting. Task units enables compensation for
vision differences between different people or
fluctuations with a person's own visual clarity on
different occasions; there's also variations caused by
light entering through windows (Blinds will allow
workers to control light in the room or glare on their
screen caused by window light).
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- The highest level of
lighting is created by placing these adjustable lamps
as close to the job area as possible.
- Reduce the potential
of shadow with your writing hand. If you're right handed,
place the task lighting lamp on the left side. If you're
left-handed, place the lamp on the right side.
- The lamp belongs on
the side of the task. Don't place the lamp in front
of the task being worked on as this may create a glare
that can be reflected from surfaces such as the polished
wood desk, shiny magazine covers, or other desk accessories.
- Use task lamps with
some amount of ambient room lighting, never in a darkened
room.
- A recommendation for
writing and reading illumination is usually 50 to 100
FC. Computer work only requires about 25 FC (FC stands
for "Foot Candle," the standard of light based on the
measurement of light emanating from a candle/candles
on an object one foot away)
- Focus the lamp downward
onto the particular object being used, such as a report
you are reading.
- Do not point the lamp
at or have it reflecting off your computer screen.
- The lit bulb should
not be visible to the eye of any person in the room;
a complete hood and proper positioning downward onto
the task surface are important.
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