Workspace lighting?

Mark Dygert

We're reconfiguring some of our space at work and they are thinking about putting some non artists in with the art team and moving some artists out of the old art department. Specifically the new non artists would go along windows that normally stay blacked out as artists currently occupy these spots.

I was wondering how other artist type people felt about overhead lighting, natural lighting and darkness in the workspace?

Do artists still like it dark?
Have you worked under different lighting conditions?
What have you do to cope with too much lighting or not enough? (The more creative the better)

SouL

As far as I can tell no one in our team really works in complete darkness. Except for a few artists.
For the most part folks have their blinds open or have some kind of small or large lamp in by their station.

We have overhead lights as well that are turned off, though.

I would suggest the non-artsy types bring their own lamp. Or pair them up with artists who don't mind extra light.

Geezus

Personally, I prefer natural lighting filling a room. However, the bulk of the environment room here doesn't see it that way. No biggy though, there are several wall mounted indirect lights setup, and a few desk lamps. For the most part, it's dark-ish in our room.

At home I work with the blinds open, letting in a lot of natural light. I still haven't found a sound solution to lighting for an apartment that doesn't revolve around large standing/ugly ass lamps. Suggestions?

Sayanora

Vig, funny you should mention this

We recently moved into a shiny new office which is infinitely more awesome/bigger, BUT! with drastic lighting changes. I'm talking natural sunlight bouncing all over the place through a row of open windows with permanently raised blinds. This was a huge shift from our old place, which basically had no natural light and very minimal indoor lighting.

Now most of the artists learned to live with this, but one of us would not have it! Long story short, he got a pair of these:

http://photodon.com/mgrh.htm

MikeF

At work we have large plane glass windows overlooking a parking lot which can be painful on sunny days due to the glare coming off all the cars, so when it gets really bad I'll shut the blinds and just use overhead fluorescent with an incandescent lamp rite over my monitor. I used to prefer working in total darkness but my eyes would start bugging from the intense brightness of the monitor compared to the rest of the room.

firestarter

Best seems to me is some natural light, not too much, and desk lamps for everyone. Relaxing!
The worst is the overhead `reflective box` office lighting:

Guaranteed to cause moaning, headaches and loss of concentration.
People are damn noisy with this type of lighting too.

sir-knight

I'm a natural light sort of person as well, even when doing digital, if I find I need to raise the contrast, I will adjust the level of natural lighting, but generally I like it decently lit. I hate working in the dark.

Tumerboy

In our old building, the art department always had the overhead lights turned off. I'm all for natural light, and don't like overhead flourescent lighting.

When we moved into the new building, artists, designers & programmers are all fairly intermingled, and thus the lights stay on all the time. Also, many in the other departments claimed that us working in the dark was making the game too dark.

I would much prefer them off, with just the natural light being let in. The problem I see is that most office buildings I've seen push offices against the outer walls, giving them the windows. That leaves anyone in cubicles SOL in the natural light department. I think it would be a better balance to have the offices in the center of the floor. That way, having an office is a trade off and not such a draw. You get a private space, but you lose natural light.

ebagg

Ideally natural light from a window, nothing with the sun glaring right into my face obviously, but at home and at work I really only use the light from my windows, when it gets dark I leave the lights off, just feels more natural. I cannot stand having a blaring desk lamp or ceiling light in my peripheral vision while working on the computer. And I don't care for those florescent overhead office light setups, I worked in a room with no natural light and just those for a year and a half, and it felt pretty damn repressive.

OGRE

I'm a big supporter of the darkness. I remember when I was 19 I had my own office at a web design firm, and after a couple weeks I decided lights were no longer necessary. I worked in complete darkness 90% of the time, and opened the blinds and turned on lights only for client meetings (where I preferred they didn't think I was a vampire).

Several productivity blogs have also gone along with this notion; or rather that the focal point and most interesting area of your workspace should be the monitors themselves... makes sense obviously.

bounchfx

I work much better when everything is very well lit. It depends on my mood though. I work in a half bright room currently.

Emil Mujanovic

This issue has been raised many times at my studio, where a lot of the artists prefer to have the lights off, but then there'd always be that one person mingled in the group that would complain about it being too dark and it was making them blind. They'd pull out the old OH&S excuse and the entire area would have to be well lit. Thus bothering everyone else.
I always pull out the globes/tubes from above my desk, I prefer there being natural light (or a soft light) behind my monitor while having minimal light reflecting on or facing my monitor.
We moved into our new office space a few months ago and the big thing was that they'd set up more switches to control the lights for specific area... LIES! It ended up being just as bad as the last office, if not worse. Once again, I was forced to pull out the tubes from the light above my desk.

-caseyjones