LIGHTING CALCULATION

LECTURE 8
ARCH 416

DR HASSAN HASSOON ALDELFI

OBJECTIVES:

How to Calculate Lighting for Optimal In-Home Levels

While designing your home, performing a lighting calculation will help you determine
how much light you need for each room and for various tasks. This page will teach you
how to calculate lighting levels.

It might seem tricky at first but luckily there are lighting tables available that list how
much light is required for various room types and tasks. Stay with us, in the end you'll
only have to multiply a few numbers together to find the light level you'll need for each
room.

Lighting Calculation Terms

The lighting tables you'll be referencing will tell you how much light you need for each room or
task in either footcandles (imperial measurements) or lux (metric).

Let's first define a few lighting terms.

Candela: One candela is equivalent to the illumination from one standard candle. (There is a far
more technical definition if you're interested at Wikipedia's candelapage.)

For those working in the imperial system:

One footcandle is the amount of illumination on a surface created by a light source of one
candela that is a foot away from the surface.

In the metric system:

One lux is the amount of illumination on a surface created by a light source of one candela that
is a metre away from the surface.

When you purchase light bulbs there will generally be two numbers of interest on the packaging.
One is Watts which measures the power draw of the bulb. The other is lumens.

For those using feet, one footcandle is equal to 1 lumen/square foot.

For those using metres, one lux is equal to 1 lumen/square metre.

So in order to calculate your lighting needs for a given room, you check an illumination chart for
the optimal number of footcandles or lux for a given task and then multiply by the square footage
(or metres) of the room to obtain the number of required lumens.

Below is a chart for basic tasks and room functions. Below the table you'll find an example home
lighting calculation for a kitchen.

Activity Footcandles Lux

Hallways 5-7 55-75
Entertaining 10-20 110-215
Dining 10-20 110-215
Easy reading 20-50 215-540
Bathroom 20-50 215-540
Kitchen—basic lighting 20-50 215-540
Kitchen—food prep 50-100 540-1075
Difficult reading or writing 50-100 540-1075
General workshop lighting 50-100 540-1075
Fine or detailed work 100-200 1075-2150

How to Calculate Lighting for a Kitchen

Note: The lighting calculation example below is calculated using the imperial system (feet). If
you are working in metres, simply exchange the footcandle numbers for the appropriate lux
numbers from the table and calculate your room area in square metres.

Let's do a lighting calculation for a 10 by 12 foot kitchen as an example. For our basic general
kitchen lighting, we know from the table above that we'll need 20-50 footcandles. For food
preparation, we'll want more like 50 to 100 footcandles.

Let's start by calculating the area of the kitchen. By multiplying the length and width of our
kitchen together we get 10 feet X 12 feet = 120 square feet.

Now to calculate the required lumens for the kitchen we multiply the number of footcandles (let's
take the dimmest general lighting level of 20 footcandles first) by the square footage. For this
we'll need 20 footcandles X 120 square feet = 2400 lumens.

For the maximum foot prep level of 100 footcandles, the calculation would be 100 footcandles X
120 square feet = 12,000 lumens.

For compact fluorescent lights (CFL) the illuminance tends to be about 40 to 70 lumens per Watt
of power draw (incandescent lights are more like 10-17 lumens/Watt). For our example let's use
20 Watt CFLs rated at 1200 lumens.

So for our lowest light requirement of 2400 lumens, the calculation would be:

2400 lumens / 1200 lumens per bulb = 2 bulbs

For our brightest light requirement of 12,000 lumens, the calculation would be:

12,000 lumens / 1200 lumens per bulb = 10 bulbs

That seems like a lot of lights but if you consider all the light possibilities for a kitchen:
dimmable recessed lights, some under cabinet lights, the light on the stove top vent hood and a
few track or hanging lights right above an island or prep counter, you could reach that ten bulb
level.

For some however, this level of 12,000 lumens may be simply too bright. For a more
personalized home lighting design, do a few quick calculations in your current home to
determine the light level in a given room. Compare the light level of that room to the tasks
shown in the table above. If you feel the light in that room is inadequate, bring in a few extra
lamps from other rooms until the light seems right. Add up the number of lumens from all the
bulbs in the room and then calculate the number of footcandles you now have in that room.
Compare this number to the chart above to get a feel where in each range you prefer your
lighting.

Keep in mind that any kind of shade over the light fixture, whether it is a lamp shade or a colored
glass pendant over the bulb will lower the number of lumens output for that bulb.
To achieve the variation in light level required between the general kitchen lighting level and the
food prep lighting level, you can group your lights on a few different switches. Under-cabinet
lights are often on a separate switch as are the lights in the stove vent hood. You can also have
any fixtures directly over an island or peninsula style counter on their own switch.

Some or all lights can also be put on dimmer switches.

If you are doing your home lighting design and the above calculations seem too frustrating,
check out LightCalc Lighting Softwarewhich will do all the lighting calculations for you.

Other Lighting Calculation Resources

HOME LIGHTING DESIGN

Good home lighting design can affect our moods, our productivity, our mental health
and the quality of social life in our homes.

When designing or re-designing a home, you can make a big impact with careful
lighting.

1. The first step is to understand the lighting options that you have.
2. The next step is to determine how much light and therefore how many fixtures
you'll need for each room.

.
Types of Home Lighting

When designing your home lighting, you'll design with both natural and artificial light.

Natural Lighting
The natural lighting for each room is determined solely by window sizing and positioning. Some
may feel inclined to have as many windows as possible and as big as they can be. There are a
few considerations regarding window size however.

 Insulation. Windows generally have poor insulating qualities (or R-value). Your love for
natural light will need to be tempered by how much you are willing to pay to heat your
home during the cooler months. Keep in mind also that one of our biggest impacts to our
carbon footprint is the energy we use for our home's heating and cooling.
 Wall space. Windows do of course take up space so be sure you are leaving adequate space
for any furniture that will line your walls, art work, floor lamps, etc.

Window Positioning
When positioning your windows for light, consider the A Pattern Language pattern called Light
on Two Sides. This pattern describes how a room with natural lighting on two sides will always
feel more natural and comfortable to its occupants. This has to do with the quality of lighting
achieved when the light is cast from two directions rather than from a single source. (Think of a
flashlight aimed just at one side of someone's face and the effect of this type of lighting.) Light
from more than one side is more what we are accustomed to in nature.

Natural Light Direction in Home Lighting Design

North. A room that is used as an art studio or office generally benefits most from northern or
indirect natural lighting. North light is more diffuse and doesn't create glare or harsh shadows.
(In the southern hemisphere you would want southern light for the same tasks.)

East. Bedrooms are best designed with natural lighting from the east to experience the natural
and gradual alarm clock of the brightening morning to awake you. Obviously in a home with
multiple bedrooms it is not always easy to do your home lighting design with all the bedrooms
having natural eastern light. Sometimes this can be achieved however with varying roof heights

West. Western windows are beautiful in sitting rooms for watching sunsets and the developing
dusk as night comes on. However, in some regions in the warmer months, you may want to
design these western windows carefully so that you do not drastically heat the house up as the
afternoon sun hangs in the western sky. In general you can avoid most solar gain in your home
during mid-day when the sun is high overhead by having adequately sized eaves over your
windows.
South. South facing windows will let in the most natural light for your home (or north facing if
you live in the southern hemisphere). They can also provide a lot of solar gain in the winter
months providing you live somewhere that gets plenty of winter sunshine.

Artificial Light

Artificial lighting can be divided into three categories:

 Area
 Task
 Accent

Area lighting provides general overall lighting in a room. Usually in home lighting design we
use area lighting to replace the natural light once the sun has gone down. Or to increase the light
level in a room lacking adequate natural light.

Task lighting is used to illuminate the task at hand. This could be a floor lamp beside your
favorite reading chair, the light on the kitchen vent hood over your stove top or the lamp on the
retractable arm over your woodworking bench.

Accent lighting is generally used to create a mood or to accent a particular object or area.

Home Lighting Design with Artificial Light

When designing your home lighting consider all three of the lighting categories (area, task and
accent) and how you will combine them to create layers of light throughout your home. If you
have gone through our designing your own home tutorial, take a quick look again at the home
needs page and reconsider each room and the functions for which it will be used. Then make
more detailed notes about the lighting requirements for that room.

As an example of layers of light, consider the following example for a dining room. You could
have general lighting in the form of recessed ceiling lights for times that you are using the dining
table as a work surface for any of your family projects (childrens' homework, art projects, etc.).
For dining, you may want a hanging light fixture centered over the table. Wall sconces could
provide background lighting for mood or to create soft lighting on the walls. Wall sconces will
also help avoid the feeling in your dining room of a single light hanging over a poker card game
(or maybe that is the effect you are looking for!).

While you are entertaining in the dining room, you may want to have low level accent lights on
in adjacent rooms or simply have any general lighting fixtures in adjacent rooms dimmed by
dimmer switches.
For each room in your home, consider the three categories of light and which will be required. In
each room also consider the light that will come in from adjacent rooms and how you can utilize
and control the level of those lights.

DRAW FLOOR PLANS

Module 8 - Design Your Own Home Tutorial

In this tutorial module you will begin to draw floor plans using the house planning you have
already done in the past modules.

This online tutorial is best followed in order. If you are just starting out with your house design,
see our tutorial site map.
If you are looking for a tutorial that shows simply how to draft the floor plans (rather than the
design process presented here), see our Make Your Own Blueprint tutorial.

Designing Floor Plans — The Process

Designing floor plans is an iterative process where you will go back and forth from your indoor
bubble diagrams, your site map, your needs analysis, house exteriors and what we have learned
about residential structure to create floor plan drawings.

Essentially, this design step is all about firming up the walls of your indoor bubble diagrams. But
as you create your plans, you may find yourself modifying your bubble diagrams, trying out
different house exteriors and occasionally crumpling up your design and starting all over. Don't
be afraid to do this. It is a learning process and each redesign brings you one step closer to a final
design that is right for the way you live.

Somewhere I have a file folder of all the weird and wonderful floor plans we fiddled around
with. Some look like they belong on another planet. This fiddling stage really helped in letting
the creativity flow but the other parts of the development process: our site plans, needs analysis,
and structural design constraints would always bring the designs back to reality.

Start with Simple Sketches

Whether you will end up drawing blueprints by hand or using home design software, I suggest
that initially you draw floor plans as simple hand sketches. You don't have to be an artist for this
stage. I certainly am not. By doing them as simple sketches you can sketch them wherever you
are using a notepad (or a paper napkin), indoors or out. Do lots of these.

Below is the main floor bubble diagram for the 1 1/2 story house from our bubble
diagram exercise. Next are two rough sketches, with the walls firmed up, for possible floor plans.
The first plan is a rectangle with three bump outs. The second floor plan has a simple rectangle
for its exterior shape. The second is a simpler and more economical option.
Draw Floor Plan Example 1
Draw Floor Plan Example 2

Below is my sketch that ended up forming the basis for our main floor house plan. (It is rotated
to match the orientation of the bubble diagram above.)

This was one of many rough sketches during the draw floor plan stage of our home. We also had
other bubble diagrams for which we did rough sketches. One of the big variants in our designs
was the kitchen and the dining area. I'm a big fan of the farmhouse kitchen where the eating area
is in the kitchen and there is no formal separate dining area. We went back and forth with many
different designs where the eating area was right in the kitchen, across a peninsula or island or,
as it turned out in the final design, adjacent and open to the kitchen.

I mentioned firming up the walls of your indoor bubble diagrams. For an open concept home
these "walls" will be more figurative than real. Oftentimes other design features will take the
places of walls. A change in flooring, ceiling height, paint color, a rug, partially open shelves or
a half height wall may define one space or "room" from another.

The sanity check for your designs should always be, “Can we build this?” (Along with, “Do we
want to build this?”) But don't let that question stifle your initial design efforts. Some great ideas
will come up when you're not worrying too much about how to build it. Later some of these
ideas can be adapted to fit into a more practical design.

Consider Structural Design Throughout the Floor Plans Design Process

Understanding basic residential structural design becomes very important at this point. There's
no use spending hours drawing floor plans that will end up needing a post in the middle of the
dining room to support the house. It is true that just about any floor plan can be built using
engineered laminated beams and posts, but stretching the limit of standard framing techniques
will add to your design cost.

Laminated beams are great, we have several in our home, but it was carefully planned as to
where we could use standard lumber and where we would need engineered products. If you
haven't already, read our basic primer on house structure.

Drawing Floor Plans Exercise

Initially let's try an exercise. Look at your main floor bubble diagram. For main floor I mean the
level of the house which situates the kitchen and living areas. If you already have an exterior
house shape in mind, go with that one initially. If not, pick one based on the basic exterior shape
of your bubble diagram. Start with a simple house shape. As we discussed in house exteriors, it's
always easy to bump the design out here or there or add a dormer where needed. If your bubble
diagram is more or less oval shaped, a basic rectangle will probably work for this draw floor plan
stage. As you design, you can bump out walls where needed. An L-shaped bubble diagram is
also easy to work with by combining one or two of the basic house shapes.

As you work, continually ask yourself how the house is going to be supported. Will you have
structural walls? Posts and beams? A mix of both? If you are building a wood frame house, pick
up a copy of lumber span tables for beams, joists, rafters and lintels. Most lumber supply stores
will have a set of tables or book for you region.

Consider each space on your main floor bubble diagram and the functions (from your needs
analysis) that it needs to fulfill. Think also of the furniture that may potentially be in this space.
Make an estimate for the size of the room. You will be free to change this as you proceed but
come up with a basic idea. Is it 12' X 12'? 18' X 16'?
Jot these dimensions down on each space on your bubble diagram. Add up the total length and
width of your diagram. You may end up with anything ranging from 25' X 25' for a small house
to 25' X 40' for an average house to—well, anything you have space and money for.

Remember, however, that depending on where you live, every additional square foot could cost
anywhere from an extra $70 to $250 (and way beyond that for a high-end home in an area where
building costs are high). An extra 10' X 10' area for a two-story home with a basement results in
an extra 300 square feet in your home (since usually this extra space is then built on each floor).
Multiply this through by your local cost per square foot and you could easily be paying $30,000
for that extra space. Designing wisely can eliminate space being added on to your home simply
because you couldn't quite get something in the design to fit.

On a piece of paper, draw your basic shape in plan view (looking down from above) and put
your dimensions on it. I usually use graph paper for sketching with each square on the graph
being one square foot. This way I only need to count off squares to make a rough drawing.

Interplay Between Spaces

On a piece of graph paper, draw each space using the rough dimensions you just decided on. Cut
these pieces of paper out, then lay them down on your draw floor plan basic shape. In this way,
you can move these basic shapes to see how the interplay between the spaces could work and
also how traffic could flow from one space to another. The shapes can overlap somewhat as
required. Identify where traffic can move right through the rooms and where extra space will be
required to allow movement between rooms or spaces.

If your house will have more than one level, make sure you create an adequate sized "room" for
your stairwell. That is, block out the required space for the stairs through all the levels that they
will traverse. This space cannot be used for anything else. It may sound obvious to some but
think of the whole stairwell area as like an elevator shaft that traverses all the floors in a home.
For a straight run of stairs, you'll need a minimum of 38 square feet blocked out on all levels that
the stair lands on. As you draw floor plans for each level, you will need to draw this stairwell
block in the same position on each floor.

On a separate piece of graph paper, make rough furniture outlines for the furniture you can
envision in the home. Use the same scale as your floor plan drawings. That is, if you are using
each square on the graph paper as one foot, do the same for your furniture. A six foot by three
foot sofa would take six squares by three squares of graph paper. Below are examples of
common household furniture and fixture symbols. (Note: The graph paper shown below is not
using the one square per foot scale.)
Place the furniture pieces on your floor plan layouts. It will quickly become evident if you have
adequate space for the furniture you are planning as well as for circulation. Here you may make
modifications to the either the room size estimates or your planned furniture. Do not
automatically assume that you need to add to your projected overall square footage if everything
does not fit. Sometimes there is space wasted in other areas of the home plan that can be shifted
to another room.

This phase of drawing floor plans is where you will spend a lot of time. Going back and forth
from your needs analysis, site plans, bubble diagrams and drawing floor plans. Do not lose sight
of your most important items in your needs analysis and use case scenarios from the bubble
diagram module. Modify the needs analysis as required to make your dream a realistic one.

Now go back to considering the house structure and what will hold it up. Pencil in on your
drawing which walls are structural or where structural posts will be located. Posts can be inside a
wall cavity or they can be decorative and in the open.

Two or More Level Homes

If you will have more than one level in the house, pull out its bubble diagram now.

On a new piece of paper, copy the basic outline of the living level floor plan you have just
designed (you may include or exclude any wall bump outs as you choose). Sketch the stairwell
opening in exactly the same place and dimension as the lower stairwell. Pencil in any structural
elements (walls or posts) immediately above or below the structural elements on the other level.

Now using your bubble diagram, start firming up the walls for the required rooms on the new
level. Often at this stage in the design it becomes necessary to go back and forth between the
different levels of the house to make everything work on all levels. Resist the urge to make the
house larger anytime that something doesn't quite fit. Instead, think outside the box. How else or
where else can that space be created? Or can it share space with another function?

Keep Cycling Through the Floor Plans Process

Continue repeating through the above steps (don't be afraid to start all over!) until you have a set
of floor plans that you feel happy with. Make sure you've penciled in all structural elements and
checked your building tables to ensure that the spans between any posts or structural walls are
reasonable.

Next Module—Building a 3-D Scale House Model

Before your draw full blueprints from your floor plan designs it's a good idea to make a simple
three-dimensional model of your house design.

Module 9: Build House Model

Heating and Lighting

This is a good time to consider your house heat options. You will need to design in adequate
space for the heating system of your choice which may or may not include duct work. For ducted
heating systems you'll have to make sure you have adequate internal walls for running duct
work.

Also consider your home lighting design at this point. Once you create your full construction
drawings you will need to indicate lighting and electrical symbols for all lights and other
electrical fixtures. Sometimes as you perform a lighting design, you will find the need to make
subtle changes to your floor plan to accommodate more or less natural light.