The modern office is not just a workplace where we sit at our desks. We jump between meetings, workshops, creative sessions and relax area for coffee breaks and networking. The flexible way of working has new requirements for the modern office and the lighting required within.

This is critical, given that the average office employee spends approximately 90% of their day indoors. The human body relies upon the circadian rhythm; an instinct based on the natural light that tells us when to sleep and when to be awake, and constant exposure to artificial illumination has a counteractive effect.

For that reason, more and more workplaces have embraced smart lighting, and in doing so, enabled a more comfortable environment for employees. Smart lighting boosts productivity, creates a functional and welcoming atmosphere, and enhances comfort and mental health. 

Human-centric lighting, or HCL, is an important term within the professional lighting world. Significant research has been dedicated to studying the effects of lighting to our well-being. To this end, an increasing number of businesses are investing in human-centric lighting. The global market value of this technology is expected to reach $3.91 billion by the year 2024.

This is money wisely spent, as human-centric lighting is critical to keeping up with our ever changing lifestyle. Until around 200 years ago, human beings spent 90% of our waking hours outside, enjoying natural light. This has now been reversed, with 90% of the time now unfolding indoors – under the glare of artificial illumination.

Indoor lighting remains essential, but so is the quality of light. Inappropriate or low quality light settings can have a severe impact on our health and wellbeing

Offices today are being designed and built differently than ever before. With sustainability, wellness and smart building applications as three of the main driving forces behind “today’s” building, it is necessary to provide infrastructures that allow for these goals to be achieved along with providing a backbone that will allow for the built space to easily adapt for the demands of tomorrow. Since 2010, the smartengine platform has been helping customers enable their space to have an infrastructure that does just that.

Today data centers are under constant pressure to find ways to improve power usage effectiveness (PUE) and drive higher uptimes. smartengine’s Building-Performance Lighting Platform provides on average a 75% reduction in energy usage from lighting and serves as a single system to monitor disruptions to uptime. The system scales well across a variety of environments from large Fortune 500 data centers and co-location facilities to smaller mission-critical facilities.