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.
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 (lx) (picture on the right). Based on illuminance can be determined, how much light hits a certain area. Due to the risk of confusion between lumens and lux, which emerged from our customer discussions, we would like to briefly explain the difference to you: The unit of measurement lumen (lm) (picture on the left) only indicates how much light emerges from the light source in all directions, but not the luminous intensity. that hits a specific area. This means that the unit of measurement Lux can be used to explicitly determine how strong the light will actually be in 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 low lux value at a large distance and a high lux value at a small distance.
Consequently, we want to give you our recommendations based on experience with customers for the various areas of application.
Which illuminance for which application?
For areas of application in a dental laboratory, a recommendation of 1000 – 1500 lux is made in the DIN standard. However, based on experience with many of our customers, we recommend an illuminance of at least 2800 - 3300 lux.
For the watchmaker and goldsmith workshop, we recommend at least 2800 – 3300 lux, similar to the dental laboratory.
Illuminance levels of 1000 - 3300 lux are suitable for model makers' workplaces. But here too, higher illuminance levels should be preferred for fine work.
Depending on the activity in your workshop, the lighting intensity can vary between 200 - 300 lux (welding, repair work on engines), 1000 lux (painting) or 1500 lux (final inspection, quality inspection). Here, too, we recommend choosing a higher illuminance so that there is enough light for the visual task to be completed.
We advise fly tyers to use a light with an illuminance of at least 1500 lux so that the colors of the flies to be tied are clearly visible.
The DIN standard stipulates at least 500 lux for the most common work in the office, but this is far exceeded in most cases. From experience, we recommend at least 750 lux as a guideline for the office, although there are no upper limits.
