OT - Light Level Standards

A bit off topic, but is there a standard (North America or IEC) that states a LUX level for control room style environments? Just doing some googling I'm finding ALOT of conflicting information.

I would go by you local Health and Safety guidelines. Remember that these are a usually specified as a minimum.
https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1926/1926.56

Here are some other guidelines:
https://www.noao.edu/education/QLTkit/ACTIVITY_Documents/Safety/LightLevels_outdoor+indoor.pdf
https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/laws-regulations/labour/interpretations-policies/039.html
https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/ergonomics/lighting_survey.html

Hope this helps you out.
Regards,

Hi, perhaps this will help
https://www.mountlighting.co.uk/cibse-recomended-lighting-levels/
Although it's referencing the UK, it has LUX levels for control rooms.

Merry Christmas!!

You can't beat going by the Health and Safety guidelines.

What I would also say is that if you're investing in lighting now, invest a bit more and get smart lighting features that LED lighting has such as presence detection and constant level of lighting.
The way energy efficiency and management is going, lighting is low hanging fruit to achieve savings and get brownie points.

Minimum guidelines are great, but there is always one user that is a pain...

We have been replacing false ceiling panel lights with the LED panels, usually based on price and 10 year guarantee, as well as replacing high bays and floods..

But some office punters have been on the phone to say that it is now too bright for them to work, as they have been used to lower level fluoroescent light for so long, that their eyes cannot adjust to the new light, even though there is now no flicker on them.

So watch what you buy, sometimes "warm white", "bright white" and "daylight" need to be tested as they can be different standards between manufacturers.

JohnCalderwood said:

But some office punters have been on the phone to say that it is now too bright for them to work, as they have been used to lower level fluoroescent light for so long, that their eyes cannot adjust to the new light, even though there is now no flicker on them.

Click to expand...

This happened to me, although I very much prefer it this way. But I did get the same comment from some people coming into the office.
I tend to basically highlight the fact that I can now perform open chest surgery on my desk should the need arise. LOL

Thanks guys. Sounds exactly like what we are dealing with. I found some ISO stuff that seems to help, but honestly nothing really fits perfectly. As far as finding something written, it’s to appease the individuals that believe it’s good to stare at computer screens in the dark.

Our control rooms are all about the same 16 to 20 monitors, half of which are showing HMIs and half CCTV. No mechanical or instrumentation. Looking through all the publications it seems offices should be between 300 and 500 lux. Which seem like a normal amount of light.

I don’t quite understand the difference of me being in a office on a computer for 8 hours with normal office light versus them doing the same but demand it must be in the dark...

JohnCalderwood said:

Minimum guidelines are great, but there is always one user that is a pain...

We have been replacing false ceiling panel lights with the LED panels, usually based on price and 10 year guarantee, as well as replacing high bays and floods..

But some office punters have been on the phone to say that it is now too bright for them to work, as they have been used to lower level fluoroescent light for so long, that their eyes cannot adjust to the new light, even though there is now no flicker on them.

So watch what you buy, sometimes "warm white", "bright white" and "daylight" need to be tested as they can be different standards between manufacturers.

Click to expand...

We have been upgrading to LED as well and also have had those who say that it's too bright. We inquired with the vendor about dimming options and it turns out that because we had been purchasing the fixtures with presence sensors, that same package includes a built in connection for a 5k pot for dimming. They can be wired together for one pot to dim all of the fixtures or in our case we just installed a pot on the lights the were "too bright" for the user.