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Office Design Office Renovation work environment

How Lighting for Conference Rooms Influences Your Meetings

lighting for conference rooms

Employees in many industries around the nation spend most of their workdays in meetings. Since it is the setting of a large portion of each and every workday, it is essential to optimize a conference room for employee productivity and satisfaction.  However, many conference rooms are lacking elements needed for this to happen, specifically, proper lighting. While it might not seem like a big issue, evidence shows lighting for conference rooms can have a major impact on the success of your meetings. Proper lighting is linked to higher rates of productivity, employee retention, and overall satisfaction in the workplace, making it an important element of any workplace. 

Looking for the best upgraded lighting for conference rooms? Here are a few helpful tips!

Invest in Versatile Lighting

Tailor your conference room lighting to fit specific meetings and satisfy different employee needs by opting for versatile lighting that can easily be dimmed. This will allow you to adjust the lighting in your conference room to improve visibility as needed; for example, group discussions and face to face meetings might require different lighting than a meeting that features a digital presentation or the use of other technology that might require the lights to be dim.

Incorporate Natural Lighting

If you are able to rely predominantly on natural light for your office’s conference room, doing so can have many positive effects on employee mental health and productivity. Natural lighting is linked to better mental and emotional health, and studies have shown that employees who have regular exposure to natural sunlight during a workday are often more productive and produce higher quality work than those who do not. If you are unable to rely on natural light from windows in your conference room, try investing in bulbs that mimic the effects of natural sunlight, which can lead to similar results.

Stay Away From Fluorescent Bulbs

If your conference room uses the bright, overhead fluorescent lighting that is typically associated with most traditional office spaces, it’s time for an upgrade. In recent years, LED lights have become a better, more visually pleasing option for many offices, as fluorescent lighting is linked to migraine symptoms in light sensitive employees, interference with employees’ sleep schedules, and poor mental and emotional health in those who spend the majority of their time in the office. LED lighting is not only more appealing to employees, but is more energy efficient and has a longer lifespan than fluorescent lighting, making LED a great investment when upgrading your office’s lighting for conference rooms. 

Contact Key Interiors To Learn More About Lighting for Conference Rooms

Key Interiors has helped enhance lighting for conference rooms in hundreds of workspaces to help boost employee productivity and satisfaction rates and to give commercial spaces in a variety of industries a modern upgrade. To learn more about our comprehensive design and build services, contact us today!

Categories
Office Design office layout

Lighting As A Wayfinding Tool

 

Wayfinding Lighting

Have you ever gotten lost in a building before? Odds are, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. Yet, established organizations often occupy very large spaces, and it can be easy for visitors and newcomers to lose their bearings in an unfamiliar building or area. This, though, can be very bad news for business leaders. You don’t want potential clients, partners, patients, or employees to feel unsettled or frustrated by a confusing layout or a difficult-to-navigate office design. As such, it’s crucial for office designers to place wayfinding aids throughout spacious work places. 

Wayfinding is a process by which people figure out their location and determine where they need to go next. While some wayfinding design elements are very straightforward –– like maps and directional signs –– others are more subtle but often just as important. Today, we’ll explain the role lighting can play in wayfinding, as well as the benefits of having a properly illuminated work area.

Light as Wayfinding tool

Using lighting as a wayfinding tool is not a new concept, but it is still an effective way to guide people through a building or space. It’s worth keeping in mind that the way light is arranged and used in a space can have a big influence on the overall nature of a built environment. Lighting doesn’t just affect the way a space looks –– it can also change how it feels

Effective and creative lighting will help people find their way through an area and experience a space as the builders intended it to be experienced. 

Here are three different ways lighting can be used to improve wayfinding:

#1 Law of Attraction

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that dramatic visuals can attract people to space. While lighting itself may not always massively factor into interior design, light fixtures can catch the eye and attract visitors. Consider how a chandelier within a large room or conspicuous lights around a reception area can change your perception of a space, to cite a few examples.

#2 Clarity of Direction

Ultimately, wayfinding is not defined by a single element. Rather, if designers want to help people progress through a given area, they need to utilize multiple factors to act as guides. Signage, maps, colors, and typography can all help people distinguish one area from another and ensure they’re moving in the right direction. However, lighting can be a very meaningful and understated way to bolster more traditional wayfinding measures. Quality design combined with the use of light to create visual cues or focal points will improve wayfinding clarity and enhance the feel of a workspace.

#3 Moth to a Flame

In simple terms, the greater the illumination of space, the greater impact it will have. People are just drawn to light. So when a space is well illuminated –– or when lighting is used to highlight certain features or signage –– people will find navigating through a space much easier.

Contact Us

At Key Interiors, we’re experts in the field of interior office design, and we can help enhance your workspace setup. Whether you need lighting assistance, new furniture, or a whole new layout and design plan, our team will work with you to create an office that your team –– and your visitors –– will love. Contact us today to learn more!

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Office Design

Office Lighting Design: The Best Options for Open Offices

 

office lighting design

COVID-19 has affected nearly every aspect of modern life, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that it has also caused business leaders to rethink their office design, layout, and –– yes –– even their lighting system. Indeed, though it may sound strange at first, the truth is that a business’s lighting system can have a big impact on employee productivity, utility costs, and even personal safety and well-being in the workplace. The choices you make in regard to your office lighting design will have meaningful consequences for your staff now and into the future. On that note, here are four lighting-related features you should always keep in mind: 

Maintaining Safe Distances

For at least the next few months, maintaining safe social distances within an office setup will be crucial for the well-being of your staff. Thankfully, connected lighting systems can allow business leaders to monitor the flow of traffic in the workspace. What’s more, employees can download certain apps that will let them identify free areas in their office. Data from sophisticated lighting systems will enable business leaders to manage their layout more effectively. 

Minimize the Spread of Germs

Decisions you make in regard to your lighting system can either act to minimize –– or facilitate –– the spread of germs in your workplace. In fact, some lights –– such as UV and Ultraviolet-C Radiation lights are capable of disinfecting air, water, and nonporous surfaces. (This includes “inactivating” the COVID-19 viral strain.) 

Additionally, moving away from manual light switches can be a great way to slow or prevent the spread of bacteria and germs in the workplace. It’s possible now for businesses to invest in apps and devices that allow for team members to adjust the lights using only their phones.  

Lighting Control & Environmental Factors

Lighting a large office area for 10+ hours every day isn’t just a massive expense for many businesses, it’s often inefficient and bad for the environment too. That’s why many businesses are switching to light systems with automated control features and motion-sensor technology. This way, when no one is currently working in an office area, the lights will go out automatically. 

What’s more, quality lighting systems will allow business leaders and managers to access key data points about their energy consumption habits. This data can also be used to create more efficient schedule choices and increase the flexibility of an office environment. 

Human-Centric Lighting

Ultimately, the lighting in an office will affect the mood and productivity of a company’s workforce. Subconsciously, humans require quality lighting in order to perform at their best on a regular basis. Investing in human-centric lighting devices –– particularly LED lights –– can help lift the morale of your team and help them focus throughout the day. Of course, it’s also important to remember just how valuable natural lighting can be as well. Though we’ve discussed many complex and advanced ways to use lighting to improve business performance, simply opening a window on a sunny day can do a world of good for your team. 

Contact Us

At Key Interiors, it’s our mission to help business leaders enhance their office setup during this very difficult time. We have years of experience creating office solutions for companies of all sizes and across industries. Contact us today to learn what we can do for your business.

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