Denmark’s Silkeborg hospital has recently decided to improve conditions for staff and patients, and commissioned lighting designer Rune Tønnes to help.
In the radiology control rooms, a certain level and temperature of lighting was necessary to ensure the monitors could be seen easily while also providing a comfortable working environment for the department. Tønnes specified a mixture of primary red and blue for viewing the greyscale monitors used with the scanners and cool blues for the rooms’ ambient lighting, together with a bright spotlight pointed directly at the desk for reading paperwork.
In the x-ray rooms, staff were often frustrated by their inability to see the machine’s aiming light on the photographic plate. Now, when the x-ray aiming light is activated, the room lighting changes automatically to primary blue, enabling easy viewing of the machine’s warm white lamp.
In the CT rooms, the lighting serves a dual purpose: to assist staff, but also to help relax patients – so, rather than have clinically white walls, the lighting provides warm, comforting, soft colours for the patient.
Lighting control is provided by an ETC Unison Paradigm system. All lighting is still T5 fluorescent tubes, but Tønnes specified a mixture of warm and cool blue tubes, which can then be set as required for the specific task and is also programmed in a 24 hour sequence. The wall uplighters, meanwhile, are modified industrial RGBW fixtures.
Later this autumn a Paradigm system with lighting designed by Rune Lighting will be installed in the hospital’s new A&E department. The 1,000 sq m area has five emergency rooms, a blood laboratory and patient waiting areas, with colour temperature control for 24h use.
