Daylight performance for work-from-home workstation: A case study of a residential condominium unit in Bangkok

Abstract Work-from-home plays an important role in nowadays human’s working life due to changes in our behavior from Covid-19. According to Bangkokian’s office workers who usually accommodated in residential condominium, it becomes both home and office, they spend their typical office hours, such as 8AM to 5PM, working at home when daylight is available. Besides visual performance, receiving sufficient daylight exposure complies with lighting recommendation helps promote productivity, well-being, and avoids visual discomfort can leads to users’ satisfaction in daylight. This paper aims to assess daylight performance and daylight visual comfort of a case study of residential condominium unit in Bangkok, recommending the best scenario of furniture layout and workstation that compatible with daylight recommendation, promoting better daylight satisfaction. To assess daylight performance, sDA, ASE, and UDI are used. Daylight glare (DGP) is required to help determine workstation locations. Computer simulation using Climate Studio for Rhino v.7 had performed facing four directions (North, South, East, and West) of a residential condominium unit, studio type room, with CBDM method and TMY weather files of Bangkok, Thailand. The results show that North is the best direction of all four directions. Complies with all three indices of daylight performance, had minimum DGP limit, and had four appropriate locations for workstations. The other three orientations had fewer workstation locations, worse daylight performance and daylight glare respectively. The lesson learned is interpreting combination of indices help determine the result more precisely than interpret single index. Moreover, to be more considerate on interior furniture layout, it may not be arranged similarly in all directions. It is crucial to assess not only daylight performance indices but also index presented glare from daylight, to generate interior furniture layouts that are suitable for each direction.