What illuminance (lux) do I need?

In lighting planning, the illuminance represents the most important technical lighting planning value for every area of application with an artificial light source and should therefore be taken into account for every lighting solution. But what is meant by this and what illuminance should be given in the respective application areas? The following article is intended to explain this and help you to choose the right lighting solution.

Which illuminance for which application?

Insufficient lighting at the workplace can lead to rapid eye fatigue and thus to poor work results. It is therefore essential to determine the illuminance differently depending on the area of application. Since there are many individual visual tasks in our everyday work, the minimum requirement for illuminance for all areas of application was defined in the DIN 12464-1 work guideline "Light and lighting - lighting of workplaces". Experiences with customers have shown, however, that in practice in some cases much higher levels of illuminance than the minimum requirements defined in the standard are required in order to create the desired visual conditions.

What is the illuminance?

The illuminance of an artificial light source is given by the unit of measurement Lux (lux) (picture on the right). Based the illuminance can be determined how a lot of light hits a certain surface. Due to the risk of confusion between lumen and lux, which emerged from our customer discussions, we would like to briefly explain the difference to you: the unit of measurement lumens (lm) (Picture on the left) only says how a lot of light comes out of the light source in all directions, but not the luminous intensitythat hits a certain surface. This means that the Lux unit of measurement can be used to explicitly determine how strong the light will really be on the work area. The result is an impression of brightness, which is perceived as very bright at a high lux value and vice versa. Depending on the distance of the light source from the work surface, this value is influenced and results in a big distance low lux value and at one small distance high lux value.

Consequently, we want to give you our recommendations based on experience with customers for the various areas of application.

Dental laboratory

For the areas of application in a dental laboratory, a recommendation from 1000 - 1500 Lux pronounced in the DIN standard. However, based on experience with many of our customers, we recommend an illuminance of at least 2800 – 3300 lux.

Luminaires for the dental laboratory

Watchmaker & Goldsmith

For the Watchmaker & goldsmith workshop we recommend at least similar to that in the dental laboratory 2800 – 3300 lux.

Luminaires for jewelry & watches

Model maker

For the workplace of model makers Illuminance levels of are suitable 1000 – 3300 lux. But here, too, a higher illuminance should be preferred for fine work.

Lights for model builders

Workshop

Depending on the activity in your workshop, the illuminance can vary from values between 200 - 300 lux (welding, repair work on engines), 1000 lux (painting) or 1500 lux (final inspection, quality inspection) vary. Here, too, we recommend choosing a higher illuminance so that sufficient light is provided for the visual task to be performed.

Luminaires for the workshop

fly tyers

fly tyers we recommend a luminaire with an illuminance of at least 1500 Lux, so that the colors of the flies to be tied are clearly visible.

Lights for fly tyers

Office & Home office

The DIN standard writes at least for the most common work in the office 500 Lux which, however, is far exceeded in most cases. From experience we recommend at least as a guide value for the office 750 Lux, with no upper limits.

Luminaires for office & home office