Lighting for a Special Educational Needs (SEN) School, London

The Challenge

Designing a lighting scheme for a highly inclusive school in London presented the challenge of supporting a wide range of sensory and learning needs across their new teaching building. The spaces needed to accommodate students with complex, profound and severe learning difficulties, requiring careful attention to visual consistency and comfort.

The school is orientated around providing support and positive management strategies with children with complex behavioural needs so they required a flexible lighting solution for the building which accommodates various rooms including the Assembly Hall, an AV/Media Room, a therapy room, sensory rooms and a soft play area.

The school is known to have a highly personal, nurturing and child centred approach, facilitated through a cohesive and experienced team, therefore having the correct and comfortable flicker free lighting was important to the client to enhance their educational provision. 

The Solution

We designed and supplied a lighting system that provides flicker safe dimming, delivering accurate illumination to the various spaces where the children are able to take advantage of the rich variety of experiences. Invisible flicker often occurs in an LED lighting systems when dimming due to the fast response times of LED’s. Our eyes are very sensitive to flicker and more so in children. Children and highly sensitized people are more susceptible to flicker induced effects, affecting comfort and health. Using flicker-safe products enabled all users to undertake their tasks in a comfortable and conducive environment, meeting the IEEE 1789 – the gold standard for flicker measurement.

The school offer a bespoke curriculum pathway and so simple-to-use lighting and lighting control has been used to enhance their offering.  For example, colour changeable lighting was used in the sensory rooms which can be controlled via the school’s tablets and operated by the student or staff member.  This can be used for relaxation/ therapy sessions or to enhance scene setting during story telling through the use of light themed rooms. We ensured the lighting design accounts for diverse sensory needs, promoting inclusivity and ease-of-use via a custom front-end controlled via wall mounted touch screens and tablet.

The creative wet-room provides students with the ability to play with water, the lighting in here can also be used to simulate various natural themes such as calm river, sky, storm, lightning, fire, and music themes such as disco and rave, to enhance the interactive nature of the space. The touchscreen controls allow students and staff to easily set the lighting environment from a list of pre-programmed scenes, customised to accommodate a broad range of sensory experiences.

For more general lighting applications such as the teaching spaces and assembly in-direct white light was used with flicker free dimming controls. We ensured the luminaires are safe at all dimming levels and maintain uniform illumination at the chosen colour and brightness creating the perfect levels of illumination in spaces where the students undertake various activities.

Our solution was designed specifically for the different applications needed, to meet the needs of a highly inclusive school, ensuring the safety of lighting products to provide a relaxed and safe learning environment.