Are you designing your new home? Looking to rearrange your living room? Tasked with designing a stage for an exhibition? One of the most persistent problems you’ll face during the design stage will be glaring, whether directly from light sources or through reflections off of shiny surfaces.
Glare causes discomfort, reduces the visual appeal of the space, and has potential health ramifications. Homeowners and interior designers need to know how to approach it and minimise it – this article will be your complete guide to the issue from defining what glare is to proposing multiple practical and actionable solutions you can implement right away!
What is glare?
Glare is defined as any light that causes temporary discomfort and leads to a loss of details when looking at an object. Glaring is usually due to excessive contrast between surfaces, the intensity of a light source, or inappropriate distribution of bright light.
Types of Glare
Glare can be broadly categorized into two types – understanding them will help you reduce glare in your environment:
- Discomfort glare: Bright and high-contrast light sources that generate an uncomfortable sensation in the eyes are generally referred to as “discomfort glare.” This glaring doesn’t necessarily lead to a loss of visual acuity and is primarily caused by light fixtures.
- Disability glare: If glaring causes a loss of details, impeding your view of an object without necessarily causing discomfort, it is considered disability glare. The most common example of disability glare is natural lighting during sunrise/sunset making it hard to see the skyline.
The Unified Glare Rating
Due to the impact of glaring on a space’s practicality and aesthetics, the Unified Glare Rating (UGR) has been designed as a standardised measure of glare. In simple terms, UGR measures the relative intensity of a light emitted/reflected from a certain spot relative to its surroundings. The higher the UGR rating of a setup, the more glare it produces.
UGR of most setups ranges from 0-5 (little to no glaring) to 35-40 (extreme amounts of glaring). For living rooms, offices, and bedrooms, it is usually recommended that no setup has a UGR of less than 19.
What Are the Negatives of Glaring?
Glare is one of the largest sources of light pollution, equally in our homes and in our cities and streets. It is an omnipresent issue that has a fundamentally negative impact on our lives. Here are a few key negatives of glaring:
Safety
Glare puts undue strain on our eyes, resulting in visual fatigue, burning in the eyes, and increased light sensitivity. In extreme circumstances, it can even lead to headaches and weakened vision, both short and long-term.
If you want to make your home a safe environment for you, your family, and your guests, you should consider how each glare source impacts the visibility and brightness in every room and work to reduce its impact!
Discomfort
Aside from safety issues, glare causes general discomfort. This is in fact why one of the primary types of glare is called “discomfort glare.” Straining the eyes, a direct glare source can be a constant nuisance when you are watching TV, reading a book, or relaxing with your family.
Reduced Aesthetic Appeal
Excessive glare can have a meaningful impact on the aesthetics of your interior. Excessive contrasts, uneven lighting, and insufficient background luminance are all symptoms of glare. This leads to uneven lighting, lack of focus, and an appealing colour scheme.
How light interacts with a room is a fundamental aspect of interior design. If you want your home to feel stylish, welcoming, and well-designed, you have to carefully consider and eliminate indirect and direct glare sources.
How to Minimize Glaring in Your Home?
Making Household Surfaces Anti-glare
Different surfaces produce different amounts of glare. This is largely governed by the reflectivity of the surface, its texture, its colour, and its transparency. Examples of highly reflective materials include mirrors, metals, and glossy furniture.
These items introduce light pollution and glare to a space. There are a few ways to fix this.
First, by simply changing the location and orientation of the reflective items, you can angle them to minimise glare in the space. This will require making fundamental changes to the room’s design, but otherwise, it is a simple and inexpensive approach.
Second, you can minimize glare by reducing the reflectivity of surfaces in the room. Full fabric covers for your windows, new matte finishes for your furniture, and more toned-down colours will all go a long way in improving the visual conditions of the room and reducing glare.
Adjusting and Replacing the Light Sources
Contrary to popular belief, every light source has the potential to cause glare. Glare is less about the light source itself and more about the property of the light it produces. Thankfully, there are solutions whether the glare is due to natural light from the sun or artificial light from fixtures.
Glare from sunlight: Windows are the source of direct and indirect sunlight, and if you want to reduce glare, therein lies the solution. Blinds, both traditional and blackout, are a great way to control the amount and intensity of natural lighting in a room. They disperse sunlight, reducing its intensity, increasing background luminance, and preventing reflected glare.
Glare from artificial light: Glare from artificial lights is primarily the result of the luminance or accent of the light. Fixtures like floodlights produce intense and focused lights, which results in both direct glare and indirect glare through bouncing off of reflective surfaces. Modern LED lights that have been specifically designed and tested for homes minimise glare through better brightness distribution, even illumination, and reduced contrast. They are perfect replacements for homeowners looking to reduce glare.
Glare FAQ
What Is Glare and Its Types?
Glare is discomfort or lack of visual clarity due to the presence of excessive brightness, pointed, reflected light, or other sources of light pollution. There are two primary types of glare: Discomfort glare and disability glare. Discomfort glare, true to its name, refers to glare that results in discomfort while disability glare refers to glare that results in a lack of visual clarity.
What Causes Light Glare?
There are three primary causes of glare. First is lighting with very high brightness which is difficult to look at. Second is highly focused accent lighting that results in an environment with high contrast. Lastly, reflective and shiny surfaces can reduce visibility through reflected glare. By purchasing quality lights, carefully paying attention to the lighting design, and rearranging the space, you have the ability to keep glaring to a minimum.