How does daylighting enhance a building’s quality?

Daylighting is not always related to building window designs. Daylighting is an integrated design concept which involves the whole building and its factors in climate, the building’s orientation, how the floor plan is laid out and interior lighting design and controls.

Daylighting might show significant impacts on reducing lighting electricity consumption since it is associated with energy operating costs. Energy cost savings can also be achieved through the use of daylighting.

Besides dealing with technical issues such as energy savings, as well as heat loss and gain, incorporating daylighting into the design offers a wide range of benefits from the interior aesthetics to human health.

As a strategy for being eco-friendly to the environment, here are the advantages and disadvantages of daylighting :

Advantages

• Maximize the light quality during most of the working hours. The light incident in a building is much greater than that required to illuminate the building interior
• As one of the expensive energy source in buildings, natural lighting will contribute to subtle changes for reducing electricity bills
• Energy savings range from 15 to 40 percent
• Aesthetically designed
• A full spectrum light will give an impact for a healthy environment

Disadvantages

• A significant amount of investment might be required when installing the high-performance daylighting system
• Direct sunlight penetration into the building’s interiors might produce inconvenient glare for people in the room

Using a daylight concept for any building is a key strategy for passive design. Below are a few strategies on how to use the light once it is in a building :

• Arrage the lighting position in a way to control the glares
• Simple windows is not an effective way to gain advantage of daylighting
• Set the building’s programs to natural daylighting
• Apply light shelf design
• Consider using clearer glasses (with sun control) for high daylight admission and tinted glass for glare control