Designing the lighting for an application while controlling obtrusive and waste light requires special considerations. Software which may adequately perform all the calculations necessary for designing the application may not be able to calculate the obtrusive and waste light parameters. Other countries are also developing similar Standards and Ordinances.
Standards normally contain recommended limits for a number of lighting parameters.
Compliance with these lighting parameter limits needs to be determined at the design stage. Lighting design is usually done with the aid of computer programs which can easily handle the repetitive three-dimensional trigonometry involved and display the results for evaluation. However, when trying to determine compliance with obtrusive and waste light limits, conventional lighting design programs are often inadequate. This is so for a number of reasons. Calculation and display of results by conventional programs may not be adequate for the range of numbers encountered in obtrusive light compliance.