How to light receptions and circulation areas
The lobby is the first sentence a building says. And corridors are the connector nobody looks at but everybody walks: if they fail, the whole feels cheap.
- Maintained illuminance
- 300 lx (mostrador 500)
- Glare (UGR)
- ≤ 22 (mostrador ≤ 19)
- Colour rendering
- > 90
- Colour temperature
- 3000 K
- Uniformity
- transición gradual
Reception requires 300 general lux and 500 lux on the desk, where people read, sign and are attended to. The face of the person attending must be well lit: if light falls only from above, it creates harsh, unwelcoming shadows.
The real technical problem in lobbies is visual adaptation. Someone entering by day comes from 10,000 exterior lux; at night, from 50 lux. Entrances must therefore be dimmable to different levels by time of day, or the entry will feel like a dark tunnel by day and dazzling at night.
Corridors only need 100–150 lux, but the standard requires the transition to be gradual: going from a 500-lux room to a 100-lux corridor forces the eye to re-adapt, creating a feeling of insecurity, especially on stairs.
Vertical illumination rules perception: washing the walls of a narrow corridor makes it look wider and brighter than placing twice as many downlights along the ceiling centre.
- Light the desk from front-above, never only from directly overhead: it avoids shadows on the face.
- Provide day and night scenes at the entrance to solve visual adaptation.
- Mark level changes and stairs with dedicated light: that is safety, not decoration.
- Wash corridor walls instead of filling the ceiling with downlights.
