Bright Ideas for Better Office Lighting

Can lighting truly transform your workspace and boost productivity? We dive deep into the world of interior lighting to uncover its hidden impact on our well-being and efficiency. From the bane of fluorescent fixtures causing migraines to the bright promise of LED upgrades, we discuss why it's vital to rethink your lighting choices. But it doesn’t end there. Discover the magic of layered lighting—general task lighting, accent lighting, and decorative touches like pendants and wall sconces—that can elevate not only the functionality but also the aesthetics of any space.

Picture walking into an office that immediately feels welcoming and motivating—good lighting often plays the unsung hero in this scenario. Through real-world examples and engaging case studies, we spotlight how thoughtfully designed lighting can revolutionize a workspace. Whether you’re redesigning an office or curious about the transformative power of good lighting, this episode offers invaluable insights. Join us and learn how to create an inspiring environment that leaves a lasting impression.

Randi Lynn Johnson is your host for the Pasley Commercial Interiors podcast conversation on everything that connects business growth and interior design. Each episode features powerful insights from Robin Pasley, NCIDQ, Founder & Design Principal.

We welcome your questions! If you would like to learn more about us or connect for a conversation, please visit www.pasleycommercialinteriors.com.

Transcript

Randi Lynn: 0:13

All right. So we've talked about lighting like bulbs, Kelvin, C Kelvin, all of the things. Yeah, but there's another piece of lighting and that is fixtures right, and how things are positioned against the wall and they emit light and all of that stuff that can really affect a space.

Robin: 0:32

Yes, yes, yes, our normal offices, you know, in a town like ours here in Colorado Springs, just for the most part have a drop ceiling in them, and inside of that drop ceiling there are either two by four or two by two light fixtures that we call truffers. Ok, and that's kind of standard fare. There's a couple of things to keep in mind if you have fluorescent fixtures in there, which, if you've been updated anytime soon, you had to move to LED for code anyways. But the fluorescents have gases in them and so they can give people migraines because they have a cycle that your eye picks up. So your brain is picking it up, but your eyes may not see it. So fluorescent lights should be. I would suggest this replace those with LED tubes if you're ballast and the fixture will let you. That is one way, just to update that piece of it, but there are. There's another way to think about lighting in general, for comfort and even just the usage of the space, and that's to think of it in a layered approach, and so the three layers that I think of in lighting and I'm not a lighting designer so this is going to be a very shallow depth on this one

Robin: 1:50

is general task lighting, accent, um accent lighting that has to do more with maybe featured spaces and um fixtures that are not just in that drop ceiling. You know whether it's a pendant or something else, like that wall sconce or something um and so those. If you can approach lighting from a layered point of view, then I think you can bring more interest to a space and make the comfort be elevated, even make the feeling of the space a little more elevated. To me, when it comes to lighting, it is 80% of a design. In other words, if you were going to say what could I spend my money on that

Robin: 2:37

would impact my space, the most.

Robin: 2:39

One of the first things I want to talk about is lighting. Okay, because if we're just doing this normal drop ceiling with a troffer in it, that is as basic as you can get for just function. But we could accentuate, let's say, the focal point behind your reception desk with a specialty set of pendants, or maybe we want to feature. You have some history of your company and we want to put some focus lights on that. This is what I'm talking about with layers is being able to put more than one way of having light emitted into that space. That would help us either focus on something or have a little flavor, and that's where those pendant fixtures or wall sconces would be that kind of design flavor. Yeah, have you ever walked into a place and just your first impression of being in that space was oh my gosh, this feels amazing. I would put all of my money on the fact that that was just really well lit and used a layered approach to the lighting.

Robin: 3:39

Okay, but if you've walked into your own office and haven't said, oh my gosh, this feels amazing, then probably the first thing you need to address is lighting. I've worked with a couple of businesses, actually, that their workforce was mostly coding, so they were working at a computer all day watching you know just code come down a page, and they one of the companies I worked with the first day that we walked through to see the site, they had all the lights off and I thought everyone was working from home that day because this was kind of in like 21, 22.

Robin: 4:12

So, I was like, oh, they're all working from home. Oh, she was like, oh no, they're here. And I was like what is happening? She goes. They can't stand the lighting and this was one of the first things that we addressed with them was okay for your function.

Robin: 4:23

You're already aware that this troffer lighting and this drop zone is not serving your workforce, which is something to think about. How do we keep our best employees happy? Think about lighting and ask them how does that lighting make you feel? How do you feel when you're working in your office? There's even a way that a small office, if it only has one or two troffers which is all that's required for that electrical engineer to get that room to code it makes it have a shadow around the whole room, which makes it feel like a cave. So now, if you've put any tone of color you know in that space, if your value from our painting talk, if the value of color you put in there had a little more, a higher number to it, then it's going to even feel more cavey. So now you have to have a white walls and two troffers and talk about basic, like we're not bringing any design to that space at all, but all it would need to change is just Adjust the lighting in there and it would feel totally different. Okay, great.