Building and Environment 157 (2019) A1–A2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Building and Environment
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/buildenv
Light in the built environment: The ceiling is not the limit
Lighting is essential in the built environment. As one o the principal
inventions o the modern era, electric lighting permitted the subsequent
development and prolieration o the myriad devices and activities that
we have come to take or granted. Lighting specied or visual per-
ormance and saety has been a boon to our 24-hour complex o in-
dustrial manuacturing, agriculture, commerce and retail, social inter-
action and recreation, transportation, public saety and condence, and
perhaps above all, comort. As Boyce points out, lighting has accrued
many such benets to humans, especially at night, satisying our basic
(e.g., physiological and saety), psychological (e.g., esteem and be-
longingness), and sel-ulllment (e.g., creative and aspirational) needs.
The ongoing development o lighting technologies has also continued to
extend these benets, sometimes with smooth transitions rom older
technologies to new, largely unamiliar solutions while experiencing
relatively ew growing pains. The Markvica et al. eld study o urban
street lighting on motorist and pedestrian perception o public space
and mobility behavior, or example, reports positive responses among
both motorists and pedestrians ater the replacement o existing ca-
tenary suspension, uorescent tube luminaires with updated, cost-
saving LED systems.
In crucial respects, the traditional denition o light that has his-
torically dominated photometry and lighting standards has ailed to
take into account all o the benets that electric lighting can oer.
Citing recent advances in neuroscience, Rea notes that the spectral bias
or long wavelengths inherent in the CIE-sanctioned photopic luminous
efciency unction, V(λ), limits light measurements and lighting stan-
dards, and ultimately misrepresents the spectral sensitivity o important
non-visual responses to light. “Since lighting can be applied to an ar-
chitectural space or any one o a variety o benets,” Rea writes, “it is
important to base photometry and lighting standards on a spectrally
neutral luminous efciency unction like U(λ) [the universal luminous
efciency unction [1]] rather than, as is the case today, on a spectrally
biased luminous efciency unction like V(λ).” Until that day arrives,
however, lighting proessionals are let to achieve what is possible
within the existing, however inadequate, parameters.
Filling out this special issue o Building and Environment is a col-
lection o 16 high-quality, timely peer-reviewed papers on the topic o
lightings’ eects on people in the built environment beyond the para-
meters o photopic vision. The highlighted areas include lighting or
visual comort, alertness, and health and well-being, as well as more
generalized lighting applications in buildings.
The theme o lighting applications in buildings is explored in two
conventional eld studies (preschool classroom and ofce space), a
laboratory study involving subjects who experienced three experi-
mental conditions that were presented via virtual reality, and a com-
puter simulation o a typical low-rise, multiunit residential building in a
hot, dry climatic zone. Vásquez et al. employ a multimethod approach
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.05.010
0360-1323/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
to identiy children's preerences or luminous environments and
window views in preschool classrooms, nding that young children can
dierentiate lighting needs according to the activities they perorm and
that seeing the outside world through classroom windows is important
to them, especially natural scenes. In two studies examining building
açades and proles, the virtual reality laboratory study perormed by
Chamilothori et al. examines how açade elements and their interaction
with light can inuence occupants' subjective and physiological re-
sponses, while the eld study by Dabe and Adan derives optimal bal-
cony depth osets to achieve optimum daylight and thermal comort in
the Nagpur region o Central India. Snyder’s eld study o luminaire-
level lighting controls (LLLCs) in an ofce space nds that LLLC para-
meter choices signicantly impact potential energy savings, but that
settings or maximum energy savings can come at a cost to occupant
satisaction.
The subject area o visual comort is largely limited to various
treatments o glare analysis, but is nonetheless broadly covered by a
large-scale eld study o over 1,000 occupant respondents in three o-
ce buildings, an analysis o a simulated ofce space, a laboratory study
incorporating a Bayesian analysis o experimental methods, and an
extensive literature review. The eld study by Day et al. examining
dynamic daylight control systems and shading strategies nds that oc-
cupants who are satised with their access to daylight have higher le-
vels o perceived productivity and job satisaction, with the most a-
vorable ratings being associated with proximity to windows, even in
areas where the likelihood o glare is signicantly higher. The ofce
simulation by Bian et al. addresses the act that although glare is de-
pendent on position and view direction within a space, most visual
comort analyses employ xed viewpoints. The authors introduce the
concept o a moveable, “adaptive zone” to better account or occupant
behavior in interior spaces. Kent et al. propose that the wide application
o Bayesian methods in experimental glare studies may improve the
accuracy and validity o glare models and acilitate comparisons be-
tween experiments. The literature review by Hamedani et al. also ad-
dresses the possibility or inconsistency and inaccuracy in the reliance
on physical measurements o luminance distribution and subjective
evaluations in evaluations o glare in ofce spaces. The authors suggest
that physiological responses should be incorporated in glare analysis,
specically recommending urther research using relative pupil size as
parameter, given its correlation with established standards such as
vertical illuminance and existing glare indices.
Three o the studies examining alertness and perormance employed
broadly similar outcome measures across a variety o experimental
conditions in laboratory studies using simulated ofce spaces. De Vries
et al. assess the impact o varying levels o “wall” (i.e., vertical) illu-
minance on standard measures o ofce workers’ subjective emotional
state, alertness, appraisal o the space, and ego depletion as well as their

objective perormance on three problem-solving tasks. Ru et al. in-
vestigate the eects o daytime illuminance levels (at the eye) and
correlated color temperature (CCT) on subjective alertness and peror-
mance in sustained attention, response inhibition, conict monitoring,
working memory, mood, and room appraisal. Chen et al. examine the
eects o window glazing types (color and transmittance) on partici-
pants' alertness and mood, perormance, and sel-reported satisaction.
A consistent thread through the results o these studies is that higher
levels o illuminance are associated with increased alertness and im-
provement in some measures o perormance. The ourth paper in this
research area, a laboratory study by Burattini et al. examining the eect
o warm (3000 K) and cool (6800 K) CCTs on visual and acoustic vig-
ilance perormance tests, shows a signicant positive impact on visual
(but not acoustic) vigilance.
Finally, the three contributions related to lighting or health and
well-being include a laboratory study, a eld study, and a comparison
o two competing models o the spectral sensitivity o the human cir-
cadian system and a proposed ramework or circadian-eective
lighting solutions. The eld study by van Lieshout-van Dal et al. eval-
uates daytime exposure to biodynamic lighting (variable CCT and light
levels) on the circadian unctioning o 13 patients with dementia ad-
mitted to a psychiatric hospital, nding that the lighting intervention
signicantly reduced nighttime wandering, nighttime time out o bed,
and daytime napping while signicantly increasing total sleep time.
The Katemake et al. laboratory study uses three separate experiments
involving navigational perormance courses to evaluate the eects o
illuminance, CCT, object edge enhancement, and contrast-enhancing
lighting on the mobility o subjects wearing low-vision glasses that si-
mulated blurry vision, central scotoma, tunnel vision, and cataracts.
The nal study, by Dai et al., evaluates the equivalent melanopic lux
A2
Building and Environment 157
model [2] and the circadian stimulus model developed by Rea and
colleagues, [3–5] and the authors propose a ramework o energy-ef-
cient circadian based on increased the room-surace reectance, the
direction o initial ux to a highly reective room surace (such as a
ceiling), and optimization o spectra or the highest circadian efcacy.
As Rea elegantly stated, we need to deliver the ull range o lighting
benets without much uss; it is hoped that this special issue will help
do just that. Viewed collectively, these diverse contributions show that
even within the limits imposed by outmoded photometry and lighting
standards, it is nonetheless possible to make important strides toward
improving quality o lie the built environment with the lighting tools
and techniques on hand. All o this bodes well or the day, however
distant or near, when new standards are adopted that realize all o
lighting’s benets or everyone and every application. The ceiling is not
the limit.
References
[1] M.S. Rea, A. Bierman, A new rationale or setting light source luminous efcacy
requirements, Light. Res. Technol. 50 (3) (2016) 340–359.
[2] R.J. Lucas, S.N. Peirson, D.M. Berson, et al., Measuring and using light in the mel-
anopsin age, Trends Neurosci. 37 (1) (2014) 1–9.
[3] M.S. Rea, M.G. Figueiro, J.D. Bullough, A. Bierman, A model o phototransduction by
the human circadian system, Brain Res. Rev. 50 (2) (2005) 213–228.
[4] M.S. Rea, M.G. Figueiro, A. Bierman, R. Hamner, Modelling the spectral sensitivity o
the human circadian system, Light. Res. Technol. 44 (4) (2012) 386–396.
[5] M.S. Rea, M.G. Figueiro, Light as a circadian stimulus or architectural lighting,
Light. Res. Technol. 50 (4) (2018) 497–510.
Mariana G. Figueiro (PhD)
Lighting Research Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY