Posted By Paul Leadbetter Scott HSG38 recommends an average of200 lux for general offices and 500 for drawing offices. Paul

Posted By Rachel Dickinson Scott, I have sent you the CIBSE lighting guide for offices. Rachel

Posted By Granville Jenkins CIBSE LG3 2001 The Visual Environment for Display Screen Use recommends 200lux for archive stores, 300lux for visual display environments and 500lux for general offices. However, things are not quite that simple LG3 goes into far more detail than simply specifying lighting levels and I would suggest a read of these guidelines. Regards Granville

Posted By Ian Dakin Hi Scott At one of our distribution centres we had a local authority enforcement officer question our lighting levels. He required I carry out an assessment (as they did not have a lux meter.) He sent me a copy of the CIBSE guidance. The CIBSE guidance is also mentioned in the ACOP - see below. 6 1 More detailed guidance is given in a separate HSE publication3'. There are also a number of publications on lighting by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers32-26. I found this useful and it satisfied the local auhority Regards Ian Dakin

Posted By Granville Jenkins One needs to be aware that there is far more to LG3 than simply specifying a lux level. LG3 requires certain levels of reflectance between the ceiling and walls etc, for example down-lighting only schemes are unlikely to meet the requirements of LG3 (The visual environment for display screens). If people want to gain an appreciation of what needs to be considered in a good lighting scheme LG3 is well worth a read. Regards Granville

Posted By Granville Jenkins Sounds like you have two problems associated with 'glare' - excessive daylight entering through the windows and the type of luminaire installed creating problems on the working plane, which is where the reading for lux levels should be taken, either that or you have a rebellion on your hands! Are the luminaires you installed dimmable so that it may provide a facility to dim the lighting down to a level that staff working in the office find comfortable. In reality whatever you do, you are unlikely to satisfy everyone in the office. However, with the right choice of luminaire and control gear you should be able to please 80% of staff and a further 15% are likely to accept the best of a bad deal, the remaining 5% may have a problem with working under artificial lighting, full stop. If you can initially please the 80% you are headed in the right direction the rest may be an up hill struggle. A solution that I have found works quite well is a combination of general lighting and task specific lighting, the general lighting provides around 300-400lux, and task lighting is provided when requested. In actual fact there is one office who have far less than 300 lux as the staff concerned have turned off the dimmable luminaires over their desks and also turned down the remaining dimmaable general lighting luminaires and achieve around 50lux (the staff concerned are very happy with the situation - so who am I to argue, the customer is always right! However, the staff do use 'task lighting' to read documents that are being typed up. It should be remembered that visual display screens are self illuminating and do not require lighting it is purely the task at hand which needs illumination. There may be a reason for staff closing the blinds assuming staff are suffering from direct glare it may be that closing the blinds fractionally does not do any good, so they are forced to fully close the blinds (assuming venetian blinds are being used. There are an alternative form of roller blind that have a perforated finish, which effectively reduce excessive daylight/sunlight entering the office while still providing a view to the outside world. Regards Granville