Visual Comfort for a Green Office Building: An Overview

Visual comfort is a subjective perception of the quantity and quality of light in any given area at any given time, and it is dependent on our ability to control the levels of light in our workplaces. Visual discomfort can be caused by either too little or too much light. This paper discusses the concept of visual comfort and how it might be attained in offices by either upgrading available electrical lighting fixtures or making better use of natural light. Several new technologies that ensure visual comfort in offices are reviewed in the paper, with the goal of worker productivity while reducing wasted energy in lighting, thus increasing energy efficiency and contributing to solving the global warming problem. This review contributes to a critical analysis of the gap in current solutions. It offers suggestions and recommendations that we hope will aid in the development of comfortable lighting in green offices.