Office lighting should be CRI 90, says Signify

LIGHTING IN offices should have a Colour Rendering Index of 90, not 80 as is standard, says Signify.

Signify has upgraded all luminaires in its European specification portfolio for office applications from CRI 80 to CRI 90.

The company says a move to the higher metric would support the trend to put health and well-being in the workplace at the top of the agenda and tie in the increasingly widely-adopted WELL Building Standard.

The company has upgraded all luminaires in its European specification portfolio for office applications from CRI 80 to CRI 90.

It emphasises that this transformation will not entail any significant loss of efficiency and lumen output will not be compromised.

This step-up in Colour Rendering Index will more accurately render object colours – displaying them even more precisely – compared to the standard CRI 80 products. 

Significantly, Signify is to make the change to CRI 90 with a red colour rendering index (R9 of 50 or higher) across the board of its office project luminaires in Europe.

‘With the step up of our specification luminaires to CRI 90, we comply with the Colour Quality parameter in the WELL Building Standard,’ Georgiana Nichifor, European product manager for indoor general areas at Signify, told Lux.

‘The WELL Building Standard differentiates to create modern, flexible working environments that foster creativity, innovation and psychological comfort.

‘For a healthy appearance of skin tones, it’s important to have sufficient spectral power in the upper part of the visible wavelength range.

‘A red rendering index, R9 of 50 or higher, is one way of achieving this,’ said Kees Teunissen, scientist optics light and vision at Signify.   

'By applying Signify’s technology, the transition from CRI 80 to CRI 90 will not entail any significant loss of efficiency (lm/W) and so no loss of lumen - a unique achievement in the lighting industry'.

The Colour Rendering Index (CRI) represents the ability of a light source to render object colours faithfully in comparison with a reference light source.

The transition from CRI 80 to CRI 90 affects the following available Philips products:  FlexBlend,  SmartBalance,  PowerBalance,  TrueLevel and TrueLine.