Daylight Assessments, Analysis and/or Modelling are increasingly required due to:

• Council requests
• Sustainable Design Assessments in the Planning Process (SDAPP) requirements
  • Daylight factor modelling
• Green Star Assessments
  • Daylight factor/lux modelling
• Fitwell Assessments
  • Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA) modelling
• And more.

Daylight Modelling/Assessments are most common for Commercial, Mixed Use and Apartment developments.

Residential daylight modelling may be required by Councils for all habitable rooms, or for specific areas that are likely to be problematic, such as rooms adjacent to light courts and "saddle bag" bedroom designs. Living rooms and bedrooms may be required to achieve a daylight factor of 1% or 0.5% respectively, for 90% of floor area, based on standardised modelling assumptions.

Non-residential daylight modelling will be required for regularly occupied / primary spaces, which may be required to achieve a daylight factor of 2% for 30% of floor area, and can achieve additional credits for achieving this for 60% or 90% of floor area.

In other cases, proposed developments can show that they are performing better than an existing proposed scheme or the development that they are replacing.

Other tools, such as Fitwell, require Spatial Daylight Autonomy modelling to confirm compliance with their benchmarks.

EcoResults can incorporate daylight modelling into any of our ESD reports to troubleshoot the design and demonstrate compliance with the relevant authority's best practice guidelines. Another benefit of doing Daylight Modelling is that once it is modelled, the model can often be used to perform JV3 thermal modelling for Class 2-9 buildings, using the same software.