2020 and 2021 seem to be years in which the office space has almost completely fallen into a shadow cone. The COVID-19 pandemic and working from home has greatly reduced the traffic of office buildings and now they are looking for ways to reinvent. The situation will not be the same in the near future, and common workspaces will return to focus sooner than expected. The difference will be that employees, accustomed to the comfort of their own homes will want it at work also. One of the ways to increase the feeling of comfort of employees will be the lighting scheme of office spaces. This gives rise to a series of new trends in commercial lighting, trends that we are trying to inventory below.
Energy saving
Electricity is becoming more and more expensive, and this upward trend will continue for many years to come. Sustainable alternatives are increasingly considered by the younger generations, who understand this simple calculation: it is good to make a financial effort now and save in the long run. LED lighting, solar panels, heat pumps, all are technologies that are gaining more and more ground and will become the norm in a very short time. The reduction of the carbon footprint at the industrial level will be followed by an offensive among home users. At this time, virtually all new office buildings illuminate their spaces with LED lighting fixtures, and this brings them significant savings on monthly bills. Older office buildings will seek to replace old, energy-intensive lighting systems with modern, flexible and economical LED lighting systems.
Project Prographic Architecture Studio
Digital lighting control
Older generation lighting systems worked with physical switches that did not allow much flexibility. The new lighting systems give total control to users and employees of office buildings. In most cases, the lighting can be modified through mobile applications and configured according to needs and time of day. Places that are not used all the time, such as hallways, meeting rooms or toilets, mean wasted energy that can be saved through smart configuration. In addition, the electrical installations related to these state-of-the-art lighting systems are cheaper to install and have low maintenance costs, because thousands of meters of electrical cables and switches will be gone.
Light for the people
The consumer-centric orientation of business in recent years has a say now in the lighting of commercial and office spaces. The clients of the office spaces are employees, people who evolve daily in these premises. Everything has to be about them, their comfort and their well-being. Studies in recent years have clearly shown that the lighting of an enclosure has a decisive effect on the well-being and productivity of the people who populate it. In the past, lighting had to do with the activity that takes place in a certain place (reading, working on the computer, etc.) and ignored the effect it had on those who performed those activities. Now, the trend is for lighting to take into account and even provoke a certain mood in those who are exposed.
Natural light first
Studies have long shown the beneficial influence that natural light has on people. The new office buildings understand these trends and have the advantage of benefiting from large glazed surfaces that let light in. Apart from the fact that it is beneficial, natural light has another great advantage: it is free. It is a win-win situation, but for this to happen you need a flexible lighting system that is easy to (re) configure. The lighting scheme must be created by a light architect, who knows how to combine different layers of light for an optimal result.
