Visual comfort for urban street lighting

The goal of urban lighting

The main objective of urban lighting is to ensure maximum visual comfort and reduce light glare. In fact, light affects three fundamental components:

• Visual component: light defines volumes and objects in space and must ensure perfect visibility of obstacles and adequate color rendering.

• Emotional component: light influences the perception of the environment around us, acting directly on our emotions. A well-illuminated environment will appear to our eyes as a safe and pleasant place, unlike a less illuminated one, which will generate a sense of insecurity and fear.

• Biological component: light influences vital rhythms, modifying the circadian rhythm and altering the natural sleep-wake cycle.

Precisely for this reason, the optical systems designed by AEC specifically for urban lighting take into account these three fundamental components and guarantee maximum visual comfort.

The color rendering index in visual comfort

Another aspect to consider when it comes to visual comfort in urban lighting is an adequate color rendering index.
The Color Rendering Index (CRI) is the value that determines the quality of light in terms of colour, or how faithful the colour of objects illuminated by a light source is. The quality of the light source then determines the level of colour rendering of an object’s colour in space. From a higher CRI value of the light source correspond the best color rendering of the illuminated object, which will be more faithful to the natural one. In general, an index between 85 and 100 indicates excellent colour rendering. It is considered good for values between 70 and 85 and acceptable for values between 50 and 70.

The benefits of Hyper Comfort optic for people

The development of Hyper Comfort optic stems from the desire to allow people to experience urban areas in a serene way even at night. People can experience positive emotions, feel good and be in a good mood, if they are faced with comfortable and well-illuminated spaces. For this reason, AEC has specifically studied an optic for urban lighting that allows you to take advantage of these areas even at night, without being bothered by light glare.

What is the secret of Hyper Comfort?

With Hyper Comfort, for example, if a child in a stroller makes direct eye contact with the light source, he is not bothered in any way. The peculiarity of the Hyper Comfort optic is in fact that it does not allow the observer to perceive the LED point source directly. The optic was built to distribute the light source over a much larger surface, thus ensuring maximum visual comfort. Furthermore, with Hyper Comfort, light dispersion in the surrounding areas is totally eliminated. In this way, for example, it will be possible to illuminate a specific area, such as a square or a cycle path, without disturbing the adjacent residential areas. It is in fact mandatory to minimize the direct dispersion of light by lighting fixtures outside the areas to be illuminated. By law it is mandatory to use totally shielded lighting fixtures, that is, having an emission of 0 cd/klm at 90 degrees and more than the vertical downward.

The solution to reduce light pollution

One of the great advantages of Hyper Comfort optic is that it does not cause light pollution: a theme that is currently very much felt when it comes to public urban lighting. The Hyper Comfort optical system contributes to the reduction of energy consumption and light pollution. The optic, in fact, was designed not to emit light rays upwards, consequently, it does not harm the night sky and has no negative impact on biodiversity.