Case study · Dental practice

Dental Practice Lighting: A Case Study from Erlangen

A dental practice in Erlangen refurbished four treatment rooms. Lighting is almost always part of a practice refurbishment – and in treatment rooms, it also has a direct bearing on the quality of the work. Here’s how we planned and carried out this project.

The brief

As part of the practice refurbishment, the lighting for four treatment rooms needed replanning. Three requirements were non-negotiable: the solution had to be quick to deliver, fit the budget, and still meet the strict requirements for treatment rooms. Meeting all three at once rarely happens by chance. So we planned first and ordered afterwards.

What lighting has to do in a treatment room

A treatment room isn’t an ordinary office. Tooth shade has to look the same under the light as it does in daylight – otherwise the shade match for crowns or fillings ends up wrong. Two values decide that:

Then there are two requirements you can’t see once the room is finished: the drivers have to run flicker-free, or eyes tire over a long working day. And the light has to be glare-free – light spilling out directly dazzles practitioner and patient alike.

Planning before the first cable

Before a panel goes up, there’s a calculation. We worked out all four rooms against German workplace lighting regulations – the rules that set out, among other things, how much lux (the unit for illuminance) needs to reach which point in the room.

A result like that can be calculated in advance, instead of hoping for the best after installation. If a figure doesn’t add up, the plan gets adjusted – not the finished room.

Fitting out four rooms

We fitted LED panels, 120×30 cm, 5000 Kelvin and CRI92+, mounted in a slim, 50 mm ceiling mounting frame. The four treatment rooms had different ceiling conditions, though – two examples:

Two ceiling conditions, two solutions – but in the end, all four rooms were calculated and fitted to the same requirements.

Result

All four treatment rooms are now fully lit, exactly to the figures we calculated beforehand. We’ve fitted lighting for over 50 dental practices to date – this project followed the same pattern: calculate first, build second.

Many thanks to the practice for the good working relationship, and for letting us show these photos of the finished rooms.

CologneLED has been planning and supplying lighting for small and medium-sized businesses from Cologne since 2014 – from dental practices and offices to hairdressing salons. More at cologne-led.de.