Drove past a drafting firm in Phoenix last week and noticed zero natural light coming through their windows

I swear every architectural drafter I know swears by natural light for catching errors, but this place had blackout blinds pulled tight on all 40 windows. How do they expect to catch a misaligned dimension line under fluorescent buzzers all day? Has anyone else seen shops that deliberately block out the sun?

3 comments

3 Comments

wadem891mo ago

My buddy Mike worked at a place like that in Tucson for six months. He said the owner was convinced natural light caused glare on monitors and made it harder to see line weights on blueprints. They had these old school fluorescent tubes that hummed loud enough to give you a headache by lunch. Mike actually caught a huge error on a foundation plan once because the shadows from the overhead lights made a dimension line look solid when it was dashed. He brought it up to the boss and got told to just zoom in closer on the screen. Last I heard the whole office got cited for something with OSHA because the lack of windows made people feel trapped and disoriented after long shifts.

mary_martin221mo ago

That part about the shadows making a dashed line look solid is exactly why I think natural light matters. Actually though, having windows doesn't automatically fix bad lighting either. @wadem89, your buddy might have been better off if they just used proper task lighting instead of those humming fluorescents. I worked with a firm that had huge north-facing windows but the morning sun still made screens totally unreadable until they put up basic blinds.

jackson.matthew1mo ago

I caught a huge error on a foundation plan once" - man, really? Like, a huge error? Or was it just something that took two seconds to fix once somebody noticed it? I've worked in plenty of crappy lit offices and yeah, it's annoying, but nobody's out here redesigning a foundation over a shadow on a dashed line. Feels like people get dramatic about office stuff when it's really just a minor inconvenience. OSHA citation for lack of windows sounds like the owner was doing way dumber things than just picking bad lights.