Control rooms

The design and layout of control rooms is a scientific research field in its own right. Operators working night shifts and watching over the plant equipment can benefit from a careful balance between activating light to increase alertness and non-activating light to help adjust their circadian rhythms, in addition to adequate glare control and light levels for reading documents and understanding operating panels efficiently.

Research on control room environments shows that most accidents happen during the night shifts – especially in the last hours of those shifts. The control room lighting plays a role in illuminating the most important parts of the panels to avoid information overload while providing the correct lighting level at times when it’s needed.

Lighting for control rooms plays an important role in regulating the operators’ circadian rhythms. Depending on the shift cycle, tuneable white luminaires or Human Centric Lighting may help adapt the operators’ inner clocks so they match a night shift schedule, or it can help to avoid switching over to a different cycle even when working at night. Both scenarios require careful control over the intensity and duration of the exposure to tuneable white light. Light also has a short-term attention-focusing effect. By boosting light intensity levels and colour temperature in short periods of time, often at the end of the night shift, the control room operators may experience alertness increases and thereby avoid losing focus and causing accidents.

industry_control rooms_2.jpg

 

Lighting requirements in EN 12464-1

General areas inside buildings – Control rooms

Type of task / activity area

Lux-level (Em)

Glare rating (UGRL)

Uniformity
(U0)


Colour rendition
(Ra)


Em,z Em,wall Em,ceiling  Specific requirements

required modified U≥ 0,10
Plant rooms, switch gear rooms 200 300 25 0,40 80 50 50 30  
Telex, post room, switchboard  500 750 19 0,60 80 150 150 100  
Surveillance station 300 500 19 0,60 80 100 100 75 1. Control panels are often vertical
2. Lighting should be dimmable
3. DSE-work

 

For power stations

Type of task / activity area

Lux-level (Em)

Glare rating (UGRL)

Uniformity
(U0)


Colour rendition
(Ra)


Em,z Em,wall Em,ceiling  Specific requirements

required modified U≥ 0,10
Control rooms 500 1000 19 0,70 80 150 150 100 1. Control panels are often vertical
2. Lighting should be dimmable
3. DSE-work

Find out more about our solutions for other types of spaces

Loading image...

Cold and frozen storage

The struggle between light and cold is an ongoing issue in the cold storage industry. Temperatures in cold storage...

Loading image...

Manufacturing plants

Modern-day assembly work is more and more automated, leading to increasingly high quality demands. The remaining visu...

Loading image...

Parking garages

Garages and multi-storey car parks can be viewed as unsafe after dark, but this image is rapidly changing as indoor...

Loading image...

Warehouse and logistics

Warehouses are usually tall buildings with high storage racks, which means they have very little or no access to...

Loading image...

Food processing

In the food processing industry, cleanliness and hygiene are imperative to ensure product quality. The frequent use o...

Loading image...

Cleanrooms

Creating luminaires for cleanrooms can be described as the art of combining robust design with easily cleanable...

Loading image...

Heavy industry

Heavy industries include mining and metal processing. Luminaires for these applications require high ingress protecti...

Loading image...

Quality control and laboratories

Despite the increasing prevalence of automated work processes, the human eye is still superior in spotting flaws and...

Loading image...

Agriculture

Light is a key environmental factor that influences and directs the physiological processes in all animals. Light mak...

Loading image...

Chemical facilities

Chemical production facilities are among the harshest environments and include a variety of work tasks. High...

Loading image...

Hazardous areas

Areas with high explosion risk exist in almost all engineering facilities and strict rules are followed in order to...