3 Lighting Solutions to Increase Productivity

Are you looking for affordable, easy ways to improve the productivity of your company? You may find room for growth in an overlooked area – the lighting of your office space.

Well-designed lighting solutions have been shown to increase employees mood, enhance their productivity, and foster better collaboration.

Light Your Way to Office Productivity

Layer the lighting

To achieve an environment which is conducive getting a lot done, you need to layer the lighting. Start broadly with the first general layer. This light source will be the farthest away from people and offer indirect light.

Ceiling pendants can be a good source of this type of light, especially in a large, organised workspace. They are fairly simple to install and help to reduce glare.

In the next layer, you need to define the zones for particular activities. You know the power of defined zones when you walk into a coffee shop or café verses your experience at the grocery store.

Defined zones create mood by making use of a variety of light intensity. The direct light becomes an invitation, illuminating a particular space, making it appear comfortable. It also can help to guide the flow of people and their zones for particular activities.

A vital question to ask is, “What activity will be taking place here?” Focused attention? Relaxation? Open discussions? For conferences and meetings, indirect ceiling luminaries could help to create a comfortable and communicative environment – bright enough to stimulate conversation and thought but less intense than an individual’s work zone. For workspaces, direct ceiling luminaries are an attractive and effective method of creating a zone.

For the final layer, the individual workspace can be further defined and adjusted by surface lighting which comes in the form of desk lamps or standing luminaries. The desk lamps which provide direct light can help with focus and attention to detail.

By giving the control to the individual, you can reduce glare thus avoiding the induced the eyestrain that brings on fatigue.

Use the appropriate temperature light bulb on the colour spectrum

The colour (or more accurately, the temperature) of your lighting has a tremendous effect on the mood and energy level of people working in that environment. Generally speaking, a light source is either warm (3000 – 4000 Kelvin) and emits colours from red, orating yellow to white or cool (5000 – 7000), and emits the colours violet and blue.

Warm colours create a sense of relaxation and could be used effectively in break rooms. A meeting room could use a mid-spectrum colour to promote both comfort and alertness.

Studies show that people work with more focus and lasting energy in cooler tones since they effectively lower sleep-inducing melatonin. Cooler tones are, therefore, very useful as task lighting for individual workspaces, keeping people more alert and less fatigued.

When looking at the type of bulbs you use to create these moods, consider the environment and cost-effective energy solutions such as LED’s, which come in a variety of spectrums.

Access natural light or other creative solutions

With all of our wonderful technology, mother nature still does it best. Natural light improves mood, decreases depression and keeps people alert. Many companies are opting for open floor plans which allow many people access to the sun. According to a scientific study by Mirjam Muench, people who were exposed to sunlight during the day were more alert close to evening.

Of course, knocking down walls isn’t always an option for every office, and luckily, there are some creative solutions. Blue lighting can be similarly helpful to mood and alertness where access to windows is limited. Since controlled lighting can offer variations of brightness by using dimmers, you can somewhat mimic the sunlight.

Some controlled lighting can even vary the temperature of the lightbulb so that you can create a natural environment of a cooler colour in the morning, moving to a warmer colour close to the evening.

In areas that lack a visual outdoor connection, wall floods can help orient people. Wall floods, which are mounted to the wall and illuminate a portion of it, are especially effective in wide open office environments.

If you are interested in further understanding how your business can be using lighting to become more productive and energy efficient, contact us today to arrange a consultation and speak to one of our energy saving lighting specialists.

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