A new report from Navigant Research looks at the role human-centric lighting plays in healthy buildings, discusses the challenges surrounding standardization and provides recommendations for stakeholders on how they can help ensure lighting plays a positive role in healthy buildings. The report, Quantifying and Standardizing the Measurement of Human-Centric Lighting, examines the growing interest in building occupant health, well-being and productivity.

The growing interest in healthy buildings is opening up new opportunities in the commercial lighting industry. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and lighting controls are some of the technologies that are helping to provide actionable data that may create a healthier atmosphere for building occupants, while also providing cost savings. However, the report finds that technology to measure and help quantify human-centric lighting is underdeveloped.

Standards organizations provide a starting point for understanding how human-centric lighting can help create healthy buildings, but a clear measurement is still needed to impact the industry. Currently, this lack of agreement on measurement is expected to delay industry progress. In the meantime, the report recommends that government organizations work to make the components of green, healthy buildings the norm, which is expected to be critical for the long-term success of these types of certifications.

“Human-centric lighting has been a growing buzzword within the lighting industry and is gaining attention by manufacturers, building owners, operators and occupants, and researchers,” said Krystal Maxwell, research analyst at Navigant Research, in a press release. “But while interest and available products are increasing, there is still a lack of research available on human-centric lighting, how to quantify the benefits of it, and the best way to measure it.”