Requirements and Industry Standards for Shop Lighting

In any shop where heavy-duty or dangerous machinery is employed, visibility helps ensure that work practices will not result in injury. Federal standards exist for the proper amount of light or illumination to be used in related environments.

Identification

• To find the requirements, and thus industry standards for shop lighting, you need to check OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) policies. OSHA's stipulations pertain to when work is actually being performed in the shop. The amount of lighting required is measured in units called foot-candles.

Features

• The specific statute regarding illumination is "OSHA 1926.56," where the organization lays out lighting requirements for all industrial environments. All "general construction shops, electric store rooms, carpenter shops, indoor toilets and workrooms" have the same expectation. This is 10 foot-candles of light during hours of operation.

Conversion

• In calculating foot-candles, it may be useful to find a conversion calculator on the Internet that does a direct conversion to watts or lumens. However, you can figure it out roughly without one. A foot-candle is the total number of lumens divided by the area of the space being lit. The lumens per watt vary depending on the type of bulb being used.