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How Much Light for a Home Office? Video Tutorial
Transcript: How Much Light Will You Really Need for Your Home Office Design?
[00:00:00] All right, let’s design the lighting for a home office.
Okay, so the first thing we’re going to do is figure out the square footage of this office that we’re designing.
That’ll help us figure out how much light is needed. Okay. So I’ll round up to 163. So let’s go over to our calculator. I’m going to assume we’re doing medium finishes. Most projects of fall in that category. Some times we have, dark finishes, sometimes we have very bright and there’s these separate calculators for those, but for this project, we’re going to assume medium, that’s the most common condition.
And then we’re going to put in home office. So our target is 20 foot candles. That is a metric that is established by the Illuminating [00:01:00] Engineering Society of North America and the Department of Energy. Next I’ll put in the square footage that we had, which was 163. Yeah, 163. And then we do have somewhat generous ceiling heights in here.
Let’s put in 11 feet and that’s going to give us the answer for how many lumens of light we need to properly illuminate this space. So I’m going to screen snip this, so I have it for later. Let’s grab that from here. Alright. Now we have this so we can refer back to it. Okay, so before I start to think about where lights are gonna go, I like to look at the room itself and [00:02:00] see if there are any logical alignments that could give us a starting point for laying out the room. for example, centering on doors, centering on windows, thinking about maybe where artwork might occur, Is this vertical surface, this wall, is that an opportunity to light?
Maybe this back wall is another opportunity. So I think we’ll start there and let’s assume maybe that there is some artwork over here and maybe there’s some artwork over here or maybe some low shelving for some books or cabinets. So let’s grab a picture light and assume that maybe we have two pieces of artwork on this north wall.
And then, At this back wall, let’s assume that maybe we want to do some adjustable recessed lights to illuminate that, [00:03:00] backdrop that’s going to be back behind this desk. I’m assuming the desk would be in this general location and then the chair would be behind, just better feng shui, so that as you enter the room, the person at the desk can see you.
All right, so let’s grab some adjustable lights for that back wall.
Maybe start there and line up with that. Okay.
And maybe we do a third here. It’s right behind where the desk would be.
And then I’m going to assume that maybe there’s a somewhat decorative table lamp that is also providing some task illumination on that, onto that desk surface as this person is working. I’m going to assume that [00:04:00] it’s. Between 600 and 800 lumens. Let’s assume 600. Okay. So let’s see where we’re at with our light target.
We need to hit roughly 5, 300 lumens. let’s go back to the calculator and start to find some placeholders for our lighting. So first let’s go find a picture light. Okay. Let’s do this one
back over here.
The second one. Okay. And then let’s find some adjustable lights.
We wanted [00:05:00] them recessed. So let’s do this one in the middle of the narrow flange.
We’re going to have three of those.
Okay. So where does that put us? So we’ve got three at seven 70 plus 600 plus.
Okay. So that brings us to 4, 676 so far.
So, we need another [00:06:00] lights. let’s plan on doing a light, maybe in the center of the room that’s pointing down onto this work surface. recessed.
Maybe it’s right in that general area. If we have a computer monitor, it’s okay to have the, a recessed light directly above it. We don’t want to have one, right behind it, pointing at our screen from a glare standpoint. So I’m okay with, this light here. It’s going to be probably 800 to. 1000 lumens. Let’s go find one.
All right.[00:07:00]
So that’s a thousand, which means that we are now at 56, 76. So we’re a little bit over our target. And this is the part where I would have a meeting with the interior designer or the architect and homeowner to talk. Talk about maybe there’s certain aspects of this design that we’d like to change up. maybe we want this to be a decorative ceiling light instead of a recessed down light.
Maybe we don’t want to do this table lamp. And so we can of mix and match from there. but we understand this is about how many lights we need in this room, in order to hit our light target to have a functional home office. All right. in general, I like to keep an open mind when I’m working with the [00:08:00] electrician and the GC.
Sometimes they have suggestions for alternates. And the thing to keep in mind with that is just making sure that any lights we choose for the job are dimmable. They are UL listed for the country that we’re working in. And then also they have a color rendering score of at least 90. That way we bring out the true colors of all the materials that we’re spending all this money on, in our installation.
All right. that’s it for now. And the next video is going to be on bedrooms.
Works Cited: Quality Home Office Lighting
Duncan, Steve. “Why Is It Important to Do a Lighting Calculation?” Lighting Design Insights. [LightingJUMP.com, https://www.lightingjump.com/how-many-lights-forest-vibe].
The author emphasizes the necessity of conducting lighting calculations to ensure effective lighting design in various spaces. He cites the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) and the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) for their established footcandle targets that help determine appropriate lighting levels. Duncan also mentions the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Department of Energy’s publicly available footcandle targets, which he uses for residential projects.
He shares a personal anecdote about the complications that arise from inadequate lighting, stressing the importance of precise calculations to avoid costly adjustments and excessive spending. The lighting estimator featured on his webpage is designed to assist clients in achieving optimal lighting without overspending.
References – Quality Residential Lighting Design
- Duncan, Steve. “Why Is It Important to Do a Lighting Calculation?” Lighting Design Insights. .
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) in Residential Lighting.” NREL/TP-53467. 2012. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53467.pdf.
- Illuminating Engineering Society. “Standards.” https://store.ies.org/individual-standards/?v=0b3b97fa6688.
- International Association of Lighting Designers. “About the IALD.” https://iald.org/IALD/IALD/About/About-
