HEALTHCARE | NON-VISUAL LIGHTING Alight and well Lighting of healthcare environments is moving beyond clinical necessity. Andrew Bissell examines the critical need to consider the nonvisual, as well as the visual, aspects of illumination H istorically, lighting healthcare environments has focused on the clinical tasks that take place in the various spaces within hospitals and surgeries. This has led to a very precise and numerical approach to the lighting. While there has been knowledge and understanding of the non-visual benefits of daylight and electric lighting, the needs of the medical staff to perform their duties have come first and, too often, have been the only consideration. Has this changed and, if so, why? Healthcare premises and, in particular, hospitals are among the most complex environments to light. This is because of the variety of peoples needs and the large number of different spaces. It is obvious to say that the visual needs of the medical staff must be addressed, but there are also the needs of the non-medical staff, patients and estates teams to consider. Added to this are the 50 and more different types of spaces and task areas, including multi-bed wards, single-bed wards, critical care, nurses stations, offices, receptions, theatres, prayer rooms, laboratories, laundries, and so on. Lighting by Whitecroft at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital The new SLL Lighting Guide 2 Lighting for Healthcare Premises (LG2) has more than eight pages of numerical criteria for lighting these varied spaces. This is more than any other sector-specific SLL lighting guide, and reflects the complexity and diversity of these environments. Fortunately for lighting practitioners, there are another 90-plus pages that deal with the key drivers when lighting each type of space and what each type of user requires. While LG2 has always been a critical component in the lighting guides, now, more than ever as lighting installations move beyond simple numerical solutions to complete visual tasks the text and research behind the guidance need to be understood and adopted. It is perhaps not surprising that, in a sector where budgets are tight including engineering and design fees solutions, too often, focus on the basic numerical requirements. As our knowledge of the benefits of non-visual lighting improves, however, using the numbers without reading the text or the associated research will be to fail the users of healthcare premises. Some areas are more easily quantifiable than others, of course. Lighting to satisfy medical needs is critical, for instance, but the criteria for achieving We are now lighting in an age when the wealth of information about the benefits of non-visual light means we can no longer ignore those aspects 8 December 2019 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Dec19 pp08-10 Healthcare lighting Supp.indd 8 22/11/2019 14:52