Peter. Robert. Boyce

• Professor Emeritus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Lighting has changed dramatically over the last two decades, but lighting standards have not. Standards were first introduced to ensure the efficient performance of visual tasks. They soon expanded to cover visual discomfort and became a means to eliminate bad lighting. Today, they often limit the ability to produce good lighting. This is partly be...

Indoor lighting standards were first introduced as a means to ensure the efficient performance of visual tasks in workplaces. Their scope soon expanded to cover a wider range of applications as well as visual discomfort. They thus became a means to eliminate bad lighting, and in this they have been successful. However, now they are often seen as a...

Light can impact human health via the visual and non-visual systems originating in the retina of the eye or as optical radiation falling on eye or skin. This paper provides a summary of what is known about these impacts. Topics covered include aspects of lighting likely to cause eyestrain and headaches; increase the risk of falls; induce circadian...

This paper discusses the rise of human-centric lighting and its current status in lighting. We summarise the human benefits associated with light and lighting and show that human-centric lighting has sound motivations, despite being tainted by misleading marketing claims. The phrase integrative lighting avoids the hype and encapsulates what lightin...

Executive summary - The two metrics traditionally used to quantify the colour properties of light sources are the correlated colour temperature and the CIE General Colour Rendering Index. With the arrival of LEDs as a major light source questions began to be asked about the merits of both of these metrics. The question asked about correlated colou...

The use of light at night continues to increase. Simply put, this is because without light we are deprived of our premier sense, vision. By enabling vision the use of light at night delivers a number of benefits to people. Such benefits include greater safety for pedestrians and drivers, reduced fear of crime, more use of outdoor facilities after d...

The first issue of Lighting Research and Technology was published in 1969. This is the first issue of the 50th volume. This paper summarises the origins and development of the journal as well as describing how both the nature and sources of papers have changed over the years. The challenges facing the journal are described and the objectives for th...

A metric is a well-defined measure that a designer can use to evaluate a design. For many years, the most widely used metrics in general lighting practice have been the average illuminance, the associated illuminance uniformity, the daylight factor, the correlated colour temperature and the CIE General Colour Rendering Index of the light source, th...

A frequent theme of current lighting research is the optimisation of light spectrum so as to provide a desirable perception closely linked to vision such as spatial brightness or a perception moderately linked to vision such as a feeling of safety outside at night or even outcomes remotely linked to vision such as a desired mood. In as far as such...

The availability of electric lighting has changed the lives of people the world over, yet as a major user of electricity it has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. This scrutiny has focused largely on the environmental consequences, with little consideration of the benefits of lighting. Human Factors in Lighting, Third Edition restores...

This paper describes a series of four experiments designed to study the phenomenon of overhead glare. In each experiment, sixteen subjects, experienced in lighting, provided an assessment of the degree of discomfort caused by a luminaire positioned at five different positions, corresponding to 55, 65, 75, 85 and 95 degrees above a horizontal line o...

Some light source technologies are notorious for being inconsistent in color between lamps of the same nominal type; Producing the same type of lamp with no apparent color differences depends on the manufacturing process and its tolerances. These requirements directly impact the cost of the final product. Therefore, the manufacturers %vant to know...

The paper describes an experiment aimed at evaluating full-spectrum, polarized lighting and presents a number of conclusions drawn from the study.

This experiment was undertaken to determine the effect of different lighting conditions on the sustained performance of a repetitive, self-paced, data-entry task. Fifteen subjects worked for one eight-hour day under each of three different lighting installations in a private, windowless office. All three lighting installations provided a similar il...

This study examines the way people choose to use individual control of lighting, the effect of having such control on the illuminance selected for different activities and the performance of those activities and how people feel about having such control. The experiment took place in three small, windowless, private offices, one lit to a maximum of...

Occupant surveys remain the most accurate and cost effective way to assess the lighting of office spaces. Presently, there are only two lighting surveys that have been developed with extensive normative data: Vischer's (1989) Lighting Comfort Scale (LCS) and Gillette and Brown's (1986) Occupant Questionnaire (OQ). The LCS is the lighting portion of...

In a previous paper I argued that any enthusiasm for modifying general lighting practice to take account of the impact of light exposure on human health would be premature. Since that paper was written enthusiasm for this course of action has waned somewhat. This is not because enhancing human health is considered a bad thing but rather because of...

This paper is based on the belief that any enthusiasm for modifying lighting practice to take account of the impact of light exposure on human health is premature. While there is no doubt that exposure to light can affect human health, there is still much to learn about the mechanisms and consequences of using light in this way. A number of questio...

Converting speech from sound energy to electrical energy and back again usually distorts the speech and adds noise to the background. The shadows on the speaker's face, particularly in video-conferencing, may look stronger when transmitted through a video system than when viewed directly because of the limited dynamic range of most video cameras. T...

Although the increments and decrements in luminance are a fairly well researched and known area in vision science, most of the work has been focused on fast changing stimuli (flicker) or static threshold measurements. Notmuch is known about visual processing of slow-changing stimuli. The described work focuses on measurements of detection threshold...

Video-conferencing is a fast growing tool for communication and education. Proper lighting is vital to the success of communication through video-conferencing, but it is seldom provided. Past recommendations for lighting these complex spaces have been based on laboratory research and practical application investigations of respected researchers and...

A retail display window is typically designed to attract potential customers. In a shopping mall, display windows compete with one another to capture the attention of shoppers, by using high light levels. Furthermore, it is typical to see high illuminance ratios in the range of 15-1 to 30-1 between the display object and the background. A majority...

The key features of MR16 halogen reflector lamps include their small size, color temperature, color rendering, variety of wattage and beam spreads, durability and ease of maintenance. These lamps are very attractive for retail and residential lighting applications. Currently, manufacturers provide optical information that includes only center beam...

Previous research has shown that, given a high enough luminance, a significant number of people experience discomfort from a luminaire overhead. However, the data that led to this conclusion were obtained from people who were all knowledgeable about lighting and hence who might have had an enhanced sensitivity to lighting conditions. This paper des...

A lighting installation constructed from luminaries fitted with full-spectrum fluorescent lamps and multi-layer polarized panels provides full-spectrum, polarized lighting. It has been claimed that major energy savings in office lighting can be made by replacing conventional fluorescent lighting with full-spectrum, polarized lighting at a lower ill...

Computers are now ubiquitous in North American offices. Unfortunately, so is poor computer screen visibility. This research looked at subjective responses to combinations of three computer screen types and 10 recessed parabolic luminaires, at two typical angles of reflection. Analysis of the data shows that the subjective response is strongly relat...

A study was conducted on the lighting and sustained performance on modeling data-entry task performance (DETP), which consisted of several objectives. The first objective aims to quantify the effects of print size, luminance contrast and illuminance on the performance of DETP over a wide range of conditions. The second aims to construct an empirica...

Visual performance is defined as the speed and accuracy of processing visual information. Existing models of visual performance evaluate illuminated tasks in terms of luminance contrast, retinal illuminance and visual size but do not consider the chromatic properties of the task. In consequence, there is no recommendation for the chromatic contrast...

This paper describes the approaches that can be used to measure task performance and illustrates them by reviewing what is known about the impacts of illuminance and light source spectral power distribution on task performance. The approaches can vary from real tasks studied in the field through simulated tasks or standard tasks to basic visual fun...