Lighting technology is concerned with many quality features, each one of which has an effect on lighting quality. The quality of artificial lighting is not only crucial for vision; it also impacts on our sense of wellbeing and our mood. So it is not enough to design a lighting installation on the basis of a single feature such as illuminance.

There are three main lighting quality objectives:

• visual comfort for enhanced task performance and a sense of wellbeing
• visual performance to enable visual tasks to be performed even under difficult conditions and for prolonged periods
• the security achieved when the requirements for visual comfort and visual performance are met.
  
  

Lighting quality thus depends on the classical lighting quality features:

• illuminance
• luminance distribution
• glare limitation
• direction of light and modelling
• light colour
• colour rendering of lamps
  
  

With the introduction of European standards (EN), especially DIN EN 12464-1, aspects such as daylight utilisation and energy-efficient light generation were added to the list of lighting quality criteria. Visual ambience and architecture also matter. And in the working world, good lighting needs to be standard-compliant.