Finally: Sunlight in the Office Cubicle

Finally: Sunlight in the Office Cubicle

Several companies, including 3M and Alcoa, introduce products promising to enhance natural lighting

By James R. Hagerty in the Wall Street Journal

It is hard to top the sun as a light source for houses and office buildings. Natural light is free, and people tend to like it.

The trouble is that sunlight can cast glare on computer screens and roast people sitting near windows. If they yank down the blinds, everyone else loses the view and natural glow.

Entrepreneurs have been trying to find technological solutions to this dilemma for decades. Despite their modest success in selling that technology, companies including 3M Co. and Alcoa Inc. keep trying, offering “daylighting” products that deflect sunlight toward the ceiling so it can gently illuminate a larger portion of a building’s interior.

3M is promoting a new “daylight-redirecting” film applied to the upper portions of windows. Alcoa has an updated “light shelf,” reflective panels affixed to walls or window frames to reroute sunbeams deeper into buildings. These are some of the latest in a long line of products introduced by firms promising to enhance natural lighting.

“It’s a great challenge,” said Gordon Gill, a Chicago architect. “Everybody wants the daylight; nobody wants the glare, and you only want the heat when it’s cold outside.”

One aim of daylighting products—to save electricity—has become less urgent as lighting costs have dropped. Russ Leslie, associate director of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., estimated that the energy used by electric lighting in a typical building has halved over the past decade, partly because of more efficient fixtures and the use of sensors to switch off lights when they aren’t needed.

Building managers also tend to provide less overhead lighting than in the past. Recommended office lighting levels, set by the Illuminating Engineering Society, are about a third the level of 40 years ago. Less overhead light is needed because people now read backlit screens instead of smudgy paper. Rather than blasting everyone with too much light, companies give employees desk lamps in case they need more.

With lighting costs so much lower, daylighting products generally can’t be justified on energy savings alone, said Michael Holtz, co-founder of LightLouver LLC, a Louisville, Colo.-based maker of louvers that redirect sunlight. Instead, Mr. Holtz said, the case for daylighting products is that natural light makes people “happier, healthier and more productive.”

Studies by architectural researcher Lisa Heschong and others have found evidence that interior daylight is associated with greater office productivity, higher retail sales and better student test scores, among other things. Mr. Leslie of Rensselaer Polytechnic says that proving productivity benefits is difficult but that natural light “contributes to well-being, reduced stress and greater contentment.”

Some companies also want to enhance their images by seeking certification for their buildings under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, program. One way to earn credits for that certification is to provide “access to daylight and views.”

Though daylighting products have been around for more than 30 years, the market remains small. Robert Westfall, president of Solatube International Inc., said global sales for such products probably total around $1 billion a year. Solatube, based in Vista, Calif., makes rooftop devices that collect sunlight and reflect it through tubes to illuminate the interiors of houses and commercial buildings.

‘We want to make sure [employees] are working in the most natural environment they can.’

—Nana Wilberforce, PNC’s energy manager

Other firms have tried to market devices that move sunlight through optical fibers to indoor light fixtures but so far have found little demand for them.

For its new headquarters in Pittsburgh, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. is using controls made by MechoSystems Inc., of Long Island City, N.Y., that automatically open or close blinds depending on lighting conditions. The blinds reflect sunlight toward the ceiling. “We want to make sure [employees] are working in the most natural environment they can,” said Nana Wilberforce, PNC’s energy manager.

3M’s sunlight-redirecting film has tiny grooves and gives windows a frosted look. The view isn’t entirely lost because the two layers of film are applied only to the top portion of the window, seven feet or more above the floor. The film, including installation, costs roughly $25 to $40 a square foot.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. used the film at a store in Evanston, Ill., designed to demonstrate energy efficiency. On a recent afternoon, the glass walls facing the parking lot were mostly shrouded with shades to prevent glare. Even so, sunlight filtered through a row of film-coated windows near the roof and reflected it off the white ceiling. Beverly Connor, who lives nearby, pronounced the store’s lighting “just right.”

Unlike a light-reflecting shelf, which needs to be cleaned periodically, the film doesn’t require extra maintenance work, 3M says. Alcoa counters that its latest version of the InLighten light shelf, introduced in 2012, is easy to clean because it can be tilted downward. The shelves, made of aluminum and as much as 30 inches deep, are installed on the inside of windows. Demand for the product is growing quickly, Alcoa said. Neither 3M nor Alcoa would provide details on sales.

Ray Jennings, president of Tidewater Glazing Inc., Hanover, Md., heard about the 3M product when he was planning to renovate a warehouse into offices for his construction company, including an open-plan “bullpen” where his project managers work, lighted partly by six-foot-high windows. “I didn’t want the sun just beating in on the perimeter desks,” Mr. Jennings said. So he used the 3M film. “It’s absolutely gorgeous,” Mr. Jennings said.

One hitch: His employees switch on the lights when they arrive for work, often before sunrise, and then forget to turn them off later in the day when there is plenty of natural light. Mr. Jennings said he may need sensors to turn off the lights.