Overview

Schools and libraries are places of learning, where lighting must fully consider sufficient brightness for reading and writing. It is important to choose light sources that are close to natural light, avoid flicker and glare, and enhance learning comfort while protecting vision health. Emergency lighting facilities should be set up in corridors and passageways to ensure safety.

1. Elements to Consider in School Lighting Design

The following major elements must be considered:

· Architectural layout and school style

· Building materials or decorative materials

· Functional zoning and ceiling height of indoor spaces

· Lighting forms and parameters determined by architectural and decorative design

· Technical parameters of main decorative materials, etc.

Reference table for illuminance in various functional areas:

2. Key Functional Area Lighting Design Guidelines

Campus Gate

The school gate serves as a living business card for the school and is an important part of the campus environment and culture, as well as one of the school's important landmark landscapes. Therefore, based on the cultural characteristics of each school, personalized shapes should be created, and the lighting design should primarily use warm yellow light, employing yellow floodlights to highlight the school's overall distinctive features.

Regular Classroom

Regular classrooms have a high usage rate, and while making full use of natural light, appropriate artificial lighting should be added as a supplement to achieve very good lighting effects both during the day and at night. To ensure sufficient illuminance for normal learning and teaching activities, the illuminance should generally be maintained at 300Lx.

The lighting requirements are as follows:

· Ensure horizontal and vertical illuminance requirements for visual targets to meet students' needs for reading, writing, and drawing.

· Facilitate face-to-face communication among students and help guide their attention to teaching or demonstration areas.

· Be able to control or adapt to different demonstration and teaching scenarios, considering the influence of natural light.

· Meet color rendering requirements, control glare, and protect vision.

Since the blackboard is placed vertically, the focus of blackboard lighting is to enhance the vertical illuminance of the blackboard, providing students with a bright and comfortable lighting environment to see their studies clearly. Specialized blackboard lighting fixtures are required to meet the lighting requirements for the blackboard, with an illuminance generally around 500Lx.

The requirements for blackboard lighting are as follows:

· To ensure students can easily see the content on the blackboard, efforts should be made to eliminate light curtain reflections from the blackboard.

· Students should not be disturbed by direct light from blackboard lighting fixtures.

· The teacher should not be disturbed by direct light from blackboard lighting fixtures.

· Ensure that the blackboard has sufficient vertical illuminance and good illuminance uniformity, with edge brightness not lower than one-third of the center brightness.

Lecture Hall

In lecture halls, the number of fixtures is large, increasing glare interference, so it is advisable to choose fixtures with good glare limitation performance. Attention should also be paid to concealing lighting fixtures that produce significant glare. To reduce light curtain reflections and glare effects, it is recommended to use light strips (continuous or discontinuous) and multi-tube block lighting schemes, while single-tube lighting schemes are not recommended.

When the lecture hall has single-sided lighting or there are shading facilities outside the windows, and natural lighting is insufficient during the day, artificial lighting should be supplemented with constant adjustments. To improve brightness distribution in the classroom and facilitate constant adjustment and energy saving of artificial lighting, it is advisable to control the lighting fixtures at different distances from the windows separately and install independent switches to achieve the constant adjustment function of artificial lighting in response to changes in natural lighting.

Lecture halls generally have upper and lower blackboards (alternating sliding), requiring uniform illuminance. One solution is to use high-power dedicated fixtures. Another solution is to use two sets of dedicated fixtures for ordinary blackboards for separate lighting of the upper and lower blackboards, but attention should be paid to ensuring that the light source capacity of the upper blackboard fixtures is 1/2 to 3/4 of that of the lower blackboard fixtures.

Fixtures should be installed in a ceiling-mounted or embedded manner. When using suspended installation, care should be taken to ensure that the height of the front row fixtures does not obstruct the line of sight of students in the back row or produce direct glare, nor should it affect projection or screening effects.

Multimedia Classroom

Multimedia classrooms are usually equipped with projectors and large screens. To ensure that students can see the screen content clearly without affecting other visual requirements of the audience, general lighting near the screen should be able to be independently turned off, which is beneficial for improving students' learning efficiency and effectiveness.

Laboratory

Laboratories may be divided into different areas based on the users, and most laboratories are equipped with computers. Therefore, it is recommended to use a mixed lighting approach. Utilize indirect or semi-direct fixtures to create a bright and visually pleasant working and learning environment. For areas requiring special lighting, such as on the laboratory bench or for careful observation and recording in specific areas, additional local lighting with sufficient illuminance can be added.

Library

The library is the information center of the school, serving the academic needs of teaching and scientific research for the entire school. It bears the dual functions of education and information services and is an important place for all faculty and students to study and research. In the design of the library lighting system, we mainly focus on health, environmental protection, and energy saving.

The main visual tasks in the library are reading, searching for books, etc. In addition to meeting illuminance standards, lighting design should strive to improve lighting quality, especially focusing on reducing glare and light curtain reflections.

In reading rooms and book storage areas, there are many lights, and energy-saving measures should be considered in terms of fixtures, lighting methods, control schemes and equipment, and management and maintenance during the design.

Important libraries should set up emergency lighting, duty lighting, or security lighting. Emergency lighting, duty lighting, or security lighting should be part of the general lighting and should be controlled separately. Duty or security lighting can also utilize part or all of the emergency lighting.

Public lighting and work (office) area lighting in the library should be separately distributed and controlled.

Safety and fire prevention should be considered in the selection, installation, and arrangement of fixtures and lighting equipment.

Reading Room

Reading rooms can generally use general lighting or mixed lighting methods. Larger reading rooms should use zoned general lighting or mixed lighting methods. The lighting methods for reading rooms are shown in the figure.

Schematic diagram of lighting methods.

When using zoned general lighting, the illuminance in non-reading areas can generally be 1/3 to 1/2 of the average illuminance on the reading area desktop. When using mixed lighting, the illuminance of general lighting should account for 1/3 to 1/2 of the total illuminance.

Indoor Gymnasium

The main function of indoor gymnasiums is to conduct small-scale sports activities. The ceiling is generally made of translucent materials to meet the basic brightness required during the day, but when natural light cannot meet the needs, the venue's lighting system must be used to supplement the light. The brightness, color rendering, and safety of indoor gymnasium lighting are three essential elements, and the light must be uniform to avoid glare.

High-power floodlights and high-bay lights are used as the main lighting for the venue, with suspended lighting methods. Track and passageways use track lighting, and halogen tungsten lights are used for emergency lighting. All suspended fixtures must be equipped with protective glass, and the illuminance should generally be between 1000-2000Lx.