Summary
The EN 12464-1 Lighting Standard specifies lighting requirements for indoor workplaces, ensuring optimal conditions across various environments like offices, healthcare, retail, and more. You could say it is easier to mention what it doesn’t cover — outdoor working areas, underground mining or emergency lighting.
Key updates in the 2021 version of the Standard include:
— User-centric recommendations are prioritised more than ever.
— Detailed elaboration on the visual and non-image forming effects of light.
— New tables for wall, ceiling, and cylindrical illuminances.
— Enhanced guidelines for applying lighting design requirements.
— Clearer glare requirements in the new Annex.
— Updated criteria for flicker and stroboscopic effects.
Arguably, the most crucial change in the Standard was changing the structure so that more information is added to the tables. Previously, many users have solely focused on the minimum requirements in the tables, missing key details in the Standard, resulting in bad design and bad lighting. Or at least not up to the criteria that the previous Standard was requesting. Although the tables now have more information, it is still important to note that the central part of the Standard are the chapters before the tables.
When considering the new EN 12464-1 Standard, it’s essential to put the needs of end-users at the heart of designing future-proof lighting. However, it is often the case that the requirements of end-users are unknown, since the end-users themselves are unknown. Despite this, modern lighting controls offers excellent tools that can help tune the light according to users’ needs.
This whitepaper looks at the latest version of EN 12464-1 through the lens of lighting control. To understand the bigger picture, every designer should read the entire Standard.
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