What Is The Best Lighting For An Office?

When you enter your office space, what do you see? Is it dark, small and dingy? Or does it feel open and bright?

While there are some aspects of a building’s structure that you can’t change, lighting in offices goes a long way to creating a productive and happy working environment. Not only is light necessary in offices to get work done, but it can have an impact on the mood of your teams while reducing the strain on people’s eyes.

So what is the best lighting for an office? That’s the topic we’re going to cover this month with a deep-dive into the best options, how to choose the right one, what the differences are between LED and fluorescent, all along with some information on productivity and energy saving — those last two will be especially eye-opening for businesses.

Office Lighting: What are my best options?

Whether you’re designing a brand new office or just upgrading your current one, it’s essential to assess all the options available to you. Here are three aspects of lighting to consider:

Natural lighting

Before we get onto the two types of electrical lighting for your office, it’s worth highlighting the importance of incorporating natural light into your office. No one wants to spend half their day in a room with no windows, so natural light is an easy way to boost the mood of your staff.

Ceiling fixtures

Your ceiling lights are likely to be spread at even intervals to create indirect lighting. This lighting helps illuminate a room all the way up to the ceiling, dispersing light over a more general area.

Task lighting

Direct lighting, or task lighting, is an item designed to give individuals the right amount of light they need to carry out their work. These are most commonly desk lamps that can be manoeuvred into position.

Shielding

Don’t forget that some rooms will require the option to shield against light and glare, particularly rooms with glass windows or walls and areas where presentations on screens will happen regularly, requiring a darker setting.

How to choose the best lighting for an office

While a lot of offices can end up looking the same these days, we understand that they’re all a little different. For example, the kind of lighting a call centre office would need is different to that required for a graphic design company, so you should keep in mind the practical demands of your business when choosing your lighting.

Here are just a few tips that you can work through to help you choose the best lighting options for your office:

• Create different zones – this allows flexibility for staff to choose where they work.
• Ensure lighting is available at each workstation – items such as lamps mean staff can control their personal lighting preference.
• Have a lighting control system fitted – it’s often better to have brighter light in the morning with a lower light later on in the afternoon for focus, so the ability to dim or brighten a room is a handy feature for any office.
• Make the most of natural light – plan your office layout around natural light sources for the best results, with blinds installed to help control privacy and light filtration.

Is warm or cool light better for an office?

One other important consideration for your lighting is whether you should opt for warmer or cooler lighting tones. There’s no one right answer to this decision, but tying back to our point on controlling the light for different times of the day, you can set the mood through the colour of your lighting in tandem with the change in natural light and your schedule.

Warmer, yellow-orange tones are better if you’re trying to create a relaxing space with a calm aura. On the other hand, cooler, white-blue lights add brightness and create a sense of purpose and focus. You may want both of these attributes for the same space, or you might choose to separate different areas by warm and cool lighting styles.

LED lights vs. Fluorescent lights

Once upon a time, fluorescent lighting could be found in all offices, giving them a clinical and slightly oppressive feeling that would be mimicked in films to project a bleak space. However, LED lighting is now more widely available to boost the office aesthetic. There are plenty of reasons why LED office lighting is better than fluorescent, but here are our top five picks:

1. You can dim or brighten LED lights with closer control to suit your requirements throughout the day
2. They’re more energy efficient, saving your business money on overheads
3. LED lights produce less glare, which is great news for offices where staff are working on screens 
4. You get more hours out of an LED bulb than a fluorescent one
5. Where fluorescent lighting has been shown to increase the risk of migraines in those prone to them, LED lights don’t trigger the same reaction

While LED lighting might cost you slightly more upfront, it’s certainly worth the investment for all the positives it can bring to your business. At Surrey Tech Services Ltd, we offer LED lighting for offices, installing these high-tech systems to boost your workspace.

Does office lighting affect productivity?

Productivity in an office can be driven by so many factors, but the working environment you provide should not be underestimated. The more comfortable your staff feel, the easier it will be for them to concentrate and get on with the work at hand.

For this reason alone, your choice of lighting greatly impacts productivity. Whether it’s a lack of natural light getting your team down or the lights overhead providing not enough/too much light, changes to your office lighting could yield some great long-term results.

Saving energy with office lighting

Two factors are driving the decisions businesses make at the moment: the environment and their energy bills. Thankfully, LED lighting for an office can help you in your efforts on both fronts.

Because LED office lights use less energy when compared with traditional fluorescent lights, you’re not only doing your bit for the planet, but you’re also making a saving on energy costs. It’s a long-term investment that will pay off quickly if you have a large office space with people working five days a week or more.

As commercial electricians for London and across the Home Counties, you can count on us to deliver fantastic results for office lighting. As part of our electrical installation service, we can provide lighting designs for your building that meet your business needs. We’re NICEIC-approved contractors with Cities & Guild NVQ Level 3-qualified engineers, giving you peace of mind when it comes to the safety of our electrical works.

Book a site survey today to discuss your plans and lighting requirements with our expert team and discover why so many of our clients rate us highly.