Light Your Office Properly to Avoid Fatigue, Improve Productivity
How much time and effort have you spent on the lighting in your office -- at work or at home?
If you're a cubicle drone, there might not be much you can do about your canned lighting, but if you work from home at least some of the time, then investing in a smart lighting solution can make you more productive, more comfortable, happier, and reduce headaches and eye strain.
Want to ensure that you have a well-lit office? Web Worker Daily recently published some office lighting tips you should consider. Here are the, err, highlights:
Maximize natural lighting. If you have any choice, organize or position the office to get the most natural light, since it's both free and many times brighter than artificial lighting.
Use indirect lighting whenever possible. Your corporate overlords know best, right? They stuck direct lights over your desk, so that's probably the best bet at home, too, right? Nope. Direct lighting leads to eye strain and l;ower productivity. Instead, go for lensed indirect lighting.
Consider your furniture. You should try to avoid positioning your computer screen such that it has a lot of glare. You might also want to position shelves and dividers to block your eyes from getting hit with direct, bright light sources. And paint your walls bright colors, which will energize you.
Space your light fixtures for uniform coverage. Make sure that you don't build in areas of uneven bright and dark, and make sure there are no dead or shadow zones in which you'll need to work.
Photo by kevygee
