Sebastian Golz, Fraunhofer-Institut fur Solare Energiesysteme ISE, Heidenhofstr. 2,
D-79110 Freiburg, Tel +49 (0)761/4588-5228; Fax: +49(0)761/4588-9217;
sebastian. goelz@ise. fraunhofer. de
Jan Wienold, Kerstin Schuler, Fraunhofer ISE, Heidenhofstr. 2,

D-79110 Freiburg, Tel +49 (0)761/4588-5133; Fax: +49(0)761/4588-9217
Jens Christoffersen

Danish Building and Urban Research, Energy and Indoor Climate Division,

PO Box 119, 2970 Hoersholm, DENMARK

Abstract: The prevention of glare caused by daylight is one of the most important issues for providing a comfortable working environment. A great deal of effort has been made to elaborate an index to describe conditions which lead to discomfort for a user (Discomfort Glare Index). Attempts to develop this Discomfort Glare Index have not yet succeeded in providing a satisfactory degree of congruence between physical lighting conditions and the comfort assessment of users in various trials of experiments. In existing research a number of factors have been found to influence the assessment of discomfort glare. Discomfort glare is compounded by other visual and aesthetic factors, such as the quality of the view from the window. The appearance of the window as well as the visual, aesthetic interior qualities of the room also affected discomfort glare. From these findings one must conclude that a pure physical paradigm to describe discomfort glare might be not sufficient in itself. In this paper, a psychological paradigm will be introduced and linked with the existing paradigm and state of research on discomfort glare. Implications for future research and on the elaboration of a more reliable glare index considering daylighting by integrating the new psychological paradigm will be outlined.