By Brent Protzman, Ph.D., Director of Product Management at Lutron Electronics
Design professionals in the commercial building landscape are fundamentally shifting their approach to occupant comfort and energy efficiency. While architects and designers have long recognized the importance of daylight control, their toolkit could only do so much. Now, the intelligent, automated shading systems that were once considered luxury amenities have evolved into strategic assets for improving energy consumption, thermal comfort, and occupant satisfaction, ultimately enhancing overall building value.
A key differentiator is intelligent, automated shades that respond to solar positioning algorithms, building occupancy, and other environmental factors, substantially outperforming static or manually operated alternatives.
Shading can be especially impactful in existing buildings, where full-envelope retrofits or extensive façade reconstruction are cost-prohibitive and a logistical nightmare. Wireless shading solutions provide a cost-effective pathway to performance upgrades without the disruption and expense of major reconstruction. For building owners and facility managers with time and budget constraints, integrated lighting and shading is particularly compelling.
Automated shades in this private healthcare lobby offer waiting visitors a beautiful city view while also providing protection from the sun. Photo Credit: Jeffrey Totaro | Courtesy Lutron
The Evolution From Manual to Intelligent
Shading for a better building environment is not a new idea. Manual shades have long served as the default solution for daylight control, but the theoretical benefits don’t often play out in real life. Implementation is a challenge – cords tangle, mechanisms break, and no two shades are ever aligned, so the look is inelegant at best. In the end, manual shades are often lowered once to address glare and remain in that position indefinitely, negating the potential for natural light harvesting, connection to the outdoors, and energy savings.
Smart, automated shading systems offer a fundamental improvement, optimizing conditions without impacting occupants or day-to-day operations. Glare—consistently cited as one of the most common workplace complaints—gets addressed proactively rather than reactively.
Beyond stand-alone automated shades, integrated lighting and shading solutions work together to magnify the energy savings and human-centric benefits. Automated shades reduce HVAC loads by blocking excessive solar heat gain in the summer while allowing beneficial passive heating during cooler months. Simultaneously, daylight-responsive lighting controls dim or turn off electric fixtures when natural light is sufficient, compounding the energy savings. During a typical workday, this coordination can significantly reduce both lighting and air conditioning costs while maintaining optimal visual conditions.
Wireless systems and luminaire-level lighting controls deliver sophisticated performance without invasive rewiring or opening up walls.
The Intersection of Daylight and Wellness
Most of us spend upwards of 90% of our time indoors, making the quality of our indoor environment crucial to our overall sense of well-being. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the green building community, nor has the outsized role that light plays in the feel of these interior spaces. In certifications including WELL and the Living Building Challenge, daylight control has emerged as a central design consideration.
Research demonstrates a clear connection between natural light exposure and performance and continues to affirm the benefits of access to natural light. Forty-four percent of 7,600 employees surveyed in an international study ranked natural light as their most-wanted element in their workplace. Additionally, in a survey of 1,614 North American employees, over half ranked natural light as their most crucial office perk, higher than on-site cafeterias, fitness centers, childcare, and medical care.
Automated shades at BlackRock’s New York headquarters keep the interior space comfortable while maintaining its Manhattan views. Credit: Eric Laignel | Courtesy Lutron
The challenge lies in achieving a consistent experience throughout the space. Daylight from perimeter windows only penetrates so far and wanes as the sun moves across the sky, leaving interior spaces disconnected from natural light cycles. This is where the integration of automated shading with tunable white electric lighting is transformative. Together, these technologies can extend the experience of daylight deeper into the floorplate, creating environments that feel authentically connected to the outdoors no matter where you are in the office. The key is to think of lighting and shading as interconnected systems.
The result is smart-building lighting design that addresses all three pillars of sustainable development: people, planet, and profit. Occupants experience better visual comfort and cognitive performance. Building lighting and HVAC systems consume less energy. Organizations benefit from improved productivity and the opportunity to meet green certification requirements. The business case and the human case are converging.
Building for an Adaptable Future
Energy savings and comfort improvements represent the most immediate benefits of automated shading; however, the long-term value proposition extends even further. Software-driven systems can evolve through over-the-air upgrades rather than relying on hardware upgrades, becoming more sophisticated as building science and control algorithms advance. This capacity for improvement extends the life of your investment while supporting evolving sustainability objectives. Whether you’re pursuing LEED, WELL, or Living Building Challenge certifications, automated shading systems can help generate credits across multiple categories: daylighting quality, energy performance, thermal comfort, and occupant satisfaction.
It’s essential to consider these systems within the context of the entire project life cycle. During design, integrated lighting and shading enable more ambitious daylighting strategies and more resilient space planning. As part of daily property operations, they deliver reliable energy savings and improve tenant comfort. Over the longer term, they help boost occupant satisfaction, productivity, and retention—outcomes that add value for property owners and commercial tenants in an increasingly competitive talent market.
The Path Forward
Smart building technologies continue to mature. For lighting designers and facility managers, the question is no longer whether to implement integrated lighting and shading but how to design systems that deliver measurable performance improvements as well as the opportunity to adapt easily as needs change.
What does success look like? Integrated, automated shading and lighting control systems that simultaneously help make buildings more efficient to operate, more comfortable to occupy, and more responsive to the people in the space—a fundamental shift to design buildings that enhance the human experience within them.
About the Author:
Brent Protzman, Ph.D., is the Director of Product Management for Commercial Shades at Lutron Electronics where he focuses on expanding the use of smart shading to improve building comfort and sustainability. His education and expertise contribute to a unique understanding of the interactions between human-centric design, operational efficiency, and sustainability.
Brent earned his Ph.D. in Architectural Engineering from the University of Nebraska and is a former professor of Building Systems at the University of Colorado. He has served on numerous industry boards, including the wireless mesh networking protocol Thread, the Light Concept advisory of the WELL Building Standard, and the Attachment Energy Ratings Council (AERC).
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