What if you could help your public safety dispatchers do their work more effectively and feel happier at their dispatch console at the same time? For many PSAPs, there’s a simple way to do that: Add ambient light.
In 2021, PSAPs across the country are moving towards adding ambient lighting to dispatch console furniture in order to improve their performance, create safer environments, and enhance dispatchers’ daily experience.
What Is Ambient Light?
Ambient lighting is a form of general lighting and is usually the main light source in a room. Depending on the lighting style and brightness, ambient light can improve the size of a space and give off a feeling of comfort or peace.
Ideally, ambient lighting gives off a nice glow to a room without causing too much illumination or bright blinding light, allowing people to move safely throughout.
Achieving optimum levels of ambient light in a room usually requires using some combination of recessed lights, light switches with dimmers, small lights interspersed throughout the room, and soft and warm colored light bulbs.
3 Reasons to Add Ambient Light to Your Dispatch Console
Ambient lighting is being used more often in PSAPs and other dispatch centers due to the positive effects it has on employees and their overall comfort and safety.
Below are three reasons why adding ambient lighting to dispatch consoles may be the best thing for your business.
1. To Improve Dispatcher Health
Adding ambient light to a dispatcher’s console can improve their overall health by eliminating some of the frustrating problems that can arise when working under uneven lighting conditions for hours on end.
Reducing eye strain
Eye fatigue is incredibly common in people who sit behind computer screens for most of their day. Providing employees with work spaces equipped with ambient lighting can have immense positive results.
When a person looks at a workspace which is lowly lit and then looks up from their monitor at a part of the room with much higher brightness (or vice versa), their pupils continuously dilate, which can cause eye strain overtime. Additionally, glare from overhead lights on monitors can also cause a person’s eyes to attempt to refocus often, which can lead to discomfort and irritation.
2. To Make Dispatch Centers Safer
More ambient lighting can also make dispatch centers safer. Providing dispatchers with lower, more focused light can improve the overall flow and function of a room, making the environment not only more pleasing, but more secure.
Providing coverage for low-light environments
Using console-based ambient lighting does not mean that a space won’t be amply lit. Evenly dispersed ambient lighting does just as much, if not more, than sterile overhead lighting.
PSAPs require low lighting due to the monitor intensive nature of a dispatcher’s work. Using ambient light throughout an emergency dispatcher’s workspace can allow for light to be focused in all of the necessary areas, without over-illuminating important spaces.
Illuminating footwells
Work lights in the footwells of dispatch consoles can provide an added layer of safety in low-light environments. This specialized lighting can ensure that dispatchers won’t trip or become tangled in cords during their intense shifts.
3. To Make the Dispatch Console Look Cool
Not only does adding ambient light to a space make it safer, but it also makes a room more pleasing to be in. Bright white overhead lights can make a space feel small and claustrophobic, while ambient lighting can make a space feel larger and more interesting to be in.
Russ Bassett Has All of the Dispatch Console Furniture You Need
Russ Bassett is an up-to-date source of information for PSAPs and can help you find all the dispatch furniture and accessories you need. Our consoles are built for 24/7 work spaces and aim to provide comfort and safety to all users. All materials, accessories and appliances are selected for decade-plus, shift work performance and all parts we manufacture are covered by our 10 Year Everything Warranty.