EN 17037 Daylight in buildings

[edit] What is the new European Standard EN 17037?

EN 17037 was published at the end of 2018 and is the first unified standard, applicable Europe-wide, that deals exclusively with the design for and provision of daylight within commercial buildings and residential dwellings.

EN 17037 replaces a multitude of existing standards across different European countries and provides a new standard where there was no existing standard.

Daylight has been shown to be an important factor for the health and wellbeing of building users. It is also able to provide appropriate illumination to carry out tasks and gives people a connection with the outdoors. Providing suitable levels of daylight to counteract the need for artificial lighting also allows energy savings.

[edit] What were the existing daylight design standards?

The previous UK code of practice for daylighting, BS 8206-2:2008, was a British Standard which applied to the UK only. It gave clear suggestions for daylight design in buildings, including how electric lighting could be designed to account for daylight provisions.

EN 17037 goes beyond the BS standard by dealing exclusively with daylight and including other methods of calculation for design parameters that did not feature in BS 8206-2.

There are also some existing European Standards that include daylight as a factor. EN 12464-1 and EN 15193 look at daylight in the context of electric lighting provision. EN 17037 though is truly unique because of its focus on the quantity and quality of daylight for building users.

Visit the VELUX Commercial website for further guidance on EN 17037.