The importance of beautiful lighting
Sustainable lighting: Are we there yet?
Recently, our sustainability team asked if I could create an internal resource on sustainable lighting manufacturers. Whilst scrolling through many lighting manufacturers websites it became immediately apparent that there is a huge disparity in the level of seriousness sustainability is being taken between manufacturers.
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For some leading the way, there is full disclosure – TM65 and TM66 information is prepared and readily available, for others there is a sustainability statement on their website claiming that they are taking sustainability seriously, that their factories have PV panels and that they take their employees’ health and wellbeing seriously, for others, there is nothing, no mention of the environment, circularity or embodied carbon or even a pathway towards achieving net zero.
So how can we compare one lighting manufacturer's sustainability credentials with others when they are all at different stages in their sustainability journey and the quality of their published information is too difficult to intelligently compare? Can we take more responsibility by designing differently?
What can we do?
Use as much free lighting as possible. If there is the opportunity to inform the design of a building’s envelope or the orientation of the building on its site, explore ways of maximising daylight penetration. This will not only reduce the building's operational energy but also improve the health and wellbeing of the occupants.
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Use as much free lighting as possible. At the National Portrait Gallery we safely reintroduced daylight into the galleries through windows which had been hidden for nearly 100 years.
© Jim Stephenson
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This is a basic one - make sure that artificial lighting is dimmed or switched off when a space is unoccupied. User-friendly control systems which monitor daylight and adjust artificial light levels should be mandatory in commercial buildings. Our cities are still full of buildings where its lighting is switched on at night.
There seems to be a general move towards the requirement of achieving higher light levels on task surfaces to enable people with different needs, the elderly and people with visual impairments for example, to carry out tasks comfortably. Rather than increase the output of the building-wide lighting solution, why not provide individually controlled task lights to enable people to determine what light levels they prefer to work under?
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At Magdalene College task lights with simple switch controls allowed us to provide higher light levels on the desks when needed.
© Nick Kane
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Specify less stuff. Do you need to have one driver per downlight? Can you utilise a wireless control system? If working on a refurbishment project, can you re-use the existing lighting? Can it be refurbished? There are numerous manufacturers who will re-work existing light fittings to utilise the latest LED modules and drivers and provide certificates and warranties to guarantee and extend the life of the refurbished luminaires. If you can re-use the existing lighting, can you reduce the number of fittings in the space?
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Can you refurbish existing lighting? For the restoration of Rochdale Town Hall, a large proportion of the fittings were recovered from the building.
© James Newton
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The value of daylight and artificial light has never been greater. Research continues to inform us about the effects of daylight and artificial lighting on our psychological and physiological wellbeing. We also now understand the impact of light pollution on the night skies and its negative impact on ecology.
Whilst the lighting industry and manufacturers work towards publishing data which is comparable, accurate and informative, we as lighting designers must start to think of ways we can design more efficiently, more consciously and more responsibly.
So no, we are not there yet, but the journey has definitely begun.
