New Daylighting Solutions Are the Key to Reviving Public Spaces After COVID

This article was written by Dr. Doug Milburn, founder of Advanced Glazings, and has been published on their behalf with their permission.

Many public spaces like offices, hotels, airports, gyms, and hospitals now not only follow new safety protocols, but are better-enabling people to create, collaborate and be productive in areas where well-being is intentionally optimized. How are they doing it? With a mix of new design thinking, new materials, and tech improvements aiming at a new set of outcomes.

From a business perspective, there are clear incentives for improving employee health and productivity. Any business owner can tell you that staff salaries and expenditures make up the bulk of operational expenses associated with occupying an office building. Indeed, over 85% of total workplace costs are spent on salaries and benefits, compared to less than 10% on rent and less than 1% on energy.

Research suggests that by making even small improvements to factors such as productivity, health, and wellbeing, businesses can experience greater financial benefit than they would from more efficient resource use in building operations. Green building design can have such a positive impact on humans and productivity that according to the World Green Building Council,

Businesses are now shifting their thinking from ‘how much will green building cost my business’ to ‘how much will not investing in green building cost my business?’

Natural lighting, or daylighting, is the controlled admission of natural light into a building to reduce electric lighting and save energy.

In order to be of maximum benefit it must be available to a significant percentage of the building interiors where the work gets done.. American office workers are spending up to 90% of their lives indoors. Therefore the best way to give workers the health benefits they find outdoors, is to bring the outside in- something that sounds basic but is extremely complex and very easy to get wrong.

Daylighting has many benefits for human health and well-being, such as improving mood and reducing stress, while enhancing alertness and productivity.

Exposure to natural light can boost serotonin levels, which regulate mood, appetite, sleep, and memory. Natural light can also lower cortisol levels, which are associated with stress and anxiety. A well-aligned circadian rhythm can improve sleep quality, energy levels, concentration, and cognitive performance.

Well-lit offices also support vision and eye health. Natural light can reduce eyestrain and headaches caused by artificial lighting or glare from screens. It also stimulates the production of vitamin D, which is essential for eye health and immunity.

However, many offices are not well designed to maximize natural light. Older office spaces especially can have small windows, deep floor plans, and drop ceilings that limit daylight penetration. While some modern glass “fishbowl” offices have the opposite problem: excessive or uncontrolled sunlight, causing glare, excessive heat, or visual discomfort.

The science behind daylighting tech

Meeting thermal goals doesn’t have to mean using less glass. Solera is a type of translucent insulated glass that combines thermally high-performance glazing with engineered light diffusers to provide uniform daylight distribution without glare or heat gain. This means rather than the light directing downward toward the floor, just as much is directed inward and upward. This redistribution means that the useful daylight is distributed deeper into a space. This maximizes daylight potential while eliminating glare and hotspots.

When evaluating light diffusion, we’re reminded that all translucent materials are not equal. Transmittance of materials can vary from specular to fully diffused, or some varying degree or combination between the two. Vision glass, or conventional glazings, has purely specular transmission, i.e. light passes straight through and does not scatter. Other glazing materials such as acid etched glass, or white laminate PVB, scatter light sufficiently but at a relatively narrow angle; consequently, the brightness of those materials will vary greatly depending on your direction of view and the direction of the incident light. Products like Solera are excellent light diffusers, meaning light that it transmits is widely scattered such that the brightness is equal in all directions.

Products like Solera can be used in the conventional application of glazings - for windows and skylights - to bring the right levels of natural light into any office space. However, these types of products are also being used to transform existing structures through the direct application of the glass to the structure, without a secondary structure. This is branded as SoleraWall.

To optimize daylighting in office spaces, architects and design teams need to consider several factors, including the direction of sunlight, window-to-wall ratio (the percentage of exterior wall area covered by windows) and glazing performance. Using a combination of landscaping, window size optimization, thermally high-performance glazing selection, daylight redirection techniques, and solar shading devices can help any office space achieve optimal daylight levels for visual and thermal comfort, regardless of climate.

Daylighting is not only a way to save energy and money, but also a way to improve well-being and performance in office spaces. Everyone responds well to walking into a building with reduced glare, great air quality, and pleasant views. Finance departments and CEOs will appreciate the energy cost-savings and asset value of building or retrofitting greener offices. By designing office spaces that allow natural light to enter in a controlled and balanced way, employers and employees can enjoy the mutual benefits of taking this important step towards adopting green building practices.

About Doug Milburn

As a long-time entrepreneur and innovator, Dr. Doug Milburn, founder of Advanced Glazings, thrives on solving problems. For more than 35 years, he’s brought passion and vision to manufacturing, engineering, software development and process engineering. Throughout his leadership, Dr. Milburn has aimed to create great workplaces by shaping a company’s success through corporate values and ethical guidelines.