Verification of simple illuminance based measures for indication of discomfort glare from windows

Abstract

Modern office buildings are often designed with highly glazed facades, with an intention of being sufficiently day lit. However, extensive daylight supply has its backside, as glare might be a considerable concern. From a building design perspective it is important to be able to make reasonable predictions of discomfort glare from windows already in the early design stage when decisions regarding the façade are taken. This study focus on verifying if simple illuminance based measures like vertical illuminance at eye level or horizontal illuminance at the desk are correlated with the perceived glare reported by 44 test subjects in a repeated measure design occupant survey and if the reported glare corresponds with the predictions from the simple Daylight Glare Probability (DGPs) model. Large individual variations were seen in the occupants' assessment of glare in the present study. Yet, the results confirm that there is a statistically significant correlation between both vertical eye illuminance and horizontal illuminance at the desk and the occupants' perception of glare in a perimeter zone office environment, which is promising evidence towards utilizing such simple measures for indication of discomfort glare in early building design. Further, the observed response indicate that the participants in the present study were more tolerant to low illuminance levels and more sensitive to high illuminance levels than the DGPs model would predict. More and larger studies are needed to confirm or enfeeble this latter finding.