Lighting to work from home: things you should take into account

All the necessary products so that you illuminate your work space properly

Teleworking products

Discover all our range of products so that teleworking from your home and is always well illuminated

Work is increasingly common from home, also called "teleworking." The demands of modern society make the need to have an area enabled at home to work increase. There are several alternatives depending on the space we have available at home. Many people are lucky enough to have a room that enable as office, many other people (most) work from the room, there are even many other people who work from the same room! All these cases are possible but if we organize it well, we can have adequate lighting to overcome the complete work day without any problem.

1 How to choose the right lighting if you work from home

The first thing we must take into account is the level of lighting necessary for a work space. The most common average lighting level in a work space (and rarely is fulfilled) is around 500ux. This is what we normally are in an office where we work with the computer and need an optimal and sufficient level of light to write and read documents. However, things change in homes. In a room, or in our living room at home, the average lighting is usually lower (200 - 300lux), even less in some cases. This means that if we want to use any of these rooms as a work zone, it is necessary to add certain elements that allow us to achieve adequate lighting levels. As for the color temperature, we must find a equilibrium point between Comfort and Aesthetics. We recommend to work a color temperature between 3000 and 4500K (warm white and natural white), to avoid the fatigue that the cold tones produce when the view is exposed to them for prolonged periods of time. Of course, it is not necessary to change the lighting of the entire home to obtain the right levels of light, simply make small "adjustments". Following the established regulations for lighting in work areas, the recommended light level has to be on the work surface. Using the layer lighting technique we can solve this easily.

2 What is the technique of laying lighting?

Lighting by layers simply refers to the fact that in an environment we can find several layers of light, each manager of a specific function. The layers in an environment can be divided into:

  • General lighting: This type of light seeks to give the area a uniformity between shadows and light, added when giving the sensation of great space. In general, this is the type of lighting that is present in all environments. Colloquially, we could say that they are the lights that we find in any room without more object than to propose light in a generic way.
  • Areas lighting: The purpose of the lighting of areas is to highlight places where specific activities are carried out. For example, a point of light near a desktop, which provides an addition of luminosity that the lights of the stay do not provide.
  • Punctual lighting: With punctual lighting, it seeks to call attention to some specific point in the room, it can be the table, the computer keyboard, etc. It is the lighting that will directly focus on the workplace.

3 Conclusions

Taking into account the three main layers that we can have in our future workplace, we probably already have the first layer (general lighting), which can be composed of the luminaires of the place and by natural lighting in the event that it exists. Based on the layer lighting technique, we could add a next layer of lighting (areas lighting), which could consist of a lamp suspended on the desk or we could even use a lane focus, we can get this by adding table lamps or reading flexos. Taking this technique into account and adding the aforementioned layers, we can get lighting to have in our home an ideal workplace that provides us with sufficient lighting, thus protecting our sight and avoiding the tiredness caused by having a little suitable lighting.

Return to the blog