Best Light Installations • LED Lighting Installations 1 2

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LED Office Lighting Improves Employee Productivity and Happiness
Most people are at least intuitively aware that bad lighting and poorly-lit spaces will adversely affect a person’s mood and productivity. Recognizing this, for many years offices and other workplaces have attempted to use a combination of natural, fluorescent, and incandescent lighting to give their employees brightly-lit environments that, at best, have a neutral effect on productivity. Employers can now transition from neutrality toward improving and enhancing employee productivity and happiness with LED lighting that projects specific colors, temperatures, and wavelengths of light.

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LED Office Lighting
Dim or harsh artificial workspace lighting will cause eye strain and headaches and will make it difficult for employees to focus on their specific tasks. Moreover, ineffective lighting can obscure fine detail that employees might need to see in order to complete tasks correctly. Natural lighting with skylights and windows is an ideal solution to ineffective artificial lighting, but not all workspaces are amenable to the use of natural light. For multiple reasons, LED lighting is the best option for indoor workspaces.

First, LED lights can be tuned to emit light in specific directions. Unlike harsh fluorescent lights that emit excess illumination without regard to direction, LED lights can be focused to illuminate specific work areas while leaving other areas to be more warmly lit. The directionality of LED lights also eliminates any need for deflectors and diffusers that also reduce overall lighting efficiency.

Next, LED lighting allows the broadest possible control and adjustment of light color temperature.  The correlated color temperature of a light source describes the relative color of that source. White light sources that trend toward the yellow or gold spectrum are considered to be warm, whereas source that are closer to blue are cool. (Note that these terms refer to a quality of the light and not the actual physical temperature of the light source.) Different areas of an overall workspace will call for different temperature lighting. Areas in which employees are doing detailed tasks or are reading will be better and more comfortable for employees if they are lit with cooler lighting. Retail spaces that display products will benefit from warm lighting. In each case, employees in those spaces react better and are more productive if the lighting matches their designated tasks. Unlike fluorescent or incandescent lighting, LED lighting gives an employer unprecedented control over color temperature.

LED color temperatures can also be adjusted to more closely replicate natural lighting. This can be critical in warehouse and loading operations in which employees are tasked with locating and distinguishing between products that have subtle variations. Better lighting in these situations reduces costly mistakes and improves employee performance.

Last, studies have shown that certain wavelengths of light are associated with alertness. Researchers have discovered, for example, that blue wavelengths suppress an individual’s natural melatonin production. Melatonin is a hormone that helps a person fall asleep. Employees who work in areas that are lit with blue light will therefore feel more alert, as their bodies will produce less of the melatonin that makes them sleepy. Alert employees will be more productive, and that productivity will lead to a greater sense of accomplishment and satisfaction with their employment.

Source: specgradeled