Rules about Office Lighting

Hey everyone,

Does any one know of any rules about lighting in an office? does a certain percentage has to be natural light for example?

My office has no windows or outside walls and it gets very warm, I'm starting to get regular headaches around the same time everyday, and I'm beginning to think its being caused by a combination of the heat and only having fluorescent lighting in the office. The building opened just after Christmas and is supposed to have an "air flow" system, which would be great if it worked, the ceiling vents are there but air defiantly does not flow.

If anyone can help or give me some information I would be very grateful

Let me google that for you

http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/internalop...-399/311_2.pdf

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg36.pdf

I thought this said Office Lightning Rules and was imagining some kind of huge tesla coil in operation by someones desk.

Good luck with your lighting issue, get your eyes checked out as poor lighting can cause damaging eye strain, there are funds and such about to help pay for such checks and glasses as a matter of health and safety and these can be used as a big stick to bash managment with about working conditions.

I don't think natural light is a requirement.....

But we opened 18 months ago in an office with no windows and the ventilation system has not worked correctly from day 1. the temp in the office was Min 24C when it was -5 outside and maxed out last summer at 29C... Rectifying this was part of the conditions for signing off the lease so we eventualy ( after the builders wasting much time and money) got a 3.5Kw AC unit fitted and we can sit at 20C easily.

If you ventilation is not working then take it up with H&S at your org and the SLT too.

Do you know who the M&E contractor was for the building?

Rob

@SYNACK i have already had my eye check and glasses paid for, which is nice because they company i work for paid part for them and i claimed the money back from Westfield health as well. I think i will have to get my eyes checked more regularly though from now on.
@twin--turbo, as the schools a BSF school and work is still on-going i've been in contact with the builders Vinci and they have engineers coming to look at it, but if they cant rectify they will be putting a small AC in and link the outlet to the server rooms AC flue...so hopefully in september my office should be nice and comfortable to work in....except the lighting but apparently the caretake has told me he can get some new lighting tubes that are better than the installed ones for light levels and are closer to natural light which may help.

@HaleStorm - yes there are high frequency low flicker, higher colour temp lights that are much nicer to work with. Also make sure you're using lcd/led monitors. You could also look at grabbing one of these for your desk Sunlight Light Therapy Lamp helps fight winter blues

@SYNACK cheers for the sunlamp idea, that might be worth getting and just setting up in the corner, the dont look like they will generate much heat either which is good. I'm defiantly asking for the new lighting tubes. Ive got a set of nice new LED monitors provided to me when we moved across to the Managed Service thing and I transferred to the new company. Maybe i can con them into buying the sunlamp aswell :P

Cheers for all the help :):)

I've been there before, and sadly, there is nothing to be done about heat :( there is a minimum temp in H&S but no maximum; the only allowance is that if you're feeling too warm, you are allowed a ten minute break. Which is not much use when your office is full of computers and expensive kit and you have to lock the door when you leave, such that the office is even warmer when you return.

Lighting I don't know, but I think so long as it isn't flickering that's all that is required. I very much doubt there's a requirement for natural light.

I used to get really bad headaches in my last job from the computer screen in the rubbish lighting.

One thing that helped massively and I cannot recommend enough is a program called F.lux:
f.lux: software to make your life better

Quote:

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F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.
f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you're in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.
Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. F.lux will do the rest, automatically.

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I ended up not using the "time of day" settings as we had zero natural light, so I just set it to the lowest (3400k) for both daytime and nighttime and it's brilliant.

When you first adjust it, everything seems really yellow, but you quickly get used to it, and now I just think that other people's screens are needlessly blue and bright :p