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LEED v5 EQc2 Option 5: The Lighting Data a Submission Has to Carry

LEED v5 EQc2 Option 5 asks for luminance under 6,000 cd/m² or UGR 19, plus CRI 90 or TM-30 values. The data each test needs, and what the text leaves open.

LEED v5 EQc2 Option 5: The Lighting Data a Submission Has to Carry

Executive summary

Option 5 of the LEED v5 Occupant Experience credit sets two requirements on the electric lighting. Each luminaire must either hold a calculated luminance below 6,000 candela per square metre between 45 and 90 degrees from nadir, or the space must reach a unified glare rating of 19 or lower. The luminaires must also reach a colour rendering index of at least 90, or meet three values from IES TM-30-20: Rf 78, Rg 95, and a red local chroma shift between −1% and 15%.

Six numeric limits carry the whole lighting-quality path, and they are quoted here from the credit page rather than from a summary. The credit does not say what paperwork satisfies them. That gap is where submissions fail: the glare test is a property of each luminaire, the UGR test is a property of each space, and the colour test picks one of two metric families with different evidence behind them.

This article quotes the requirement text for all four paths, explains what each number measures, records the difference between the TM-30 edition LEED names and the edition IES now publishes, and ends with the data list to put in front of a supplier.

Key facts and where each one comes from

  1. Option 5 is one option inside a seven-point credit, and its largest point band is daylight simulation. The credit header reads "EQc2 | Possible 7 Points", and the lighting option reads "Option 5. Lighting Environment (1–6 points) (Option 2. in Core and Shell)". Inside it, Path 1 (solar glare), Path 2 (quality electric lighting) and Path 3 (proximity to windows) are listed at one point each, and Path 4 (daylight simulation) at one to four. Path 2 alone is worth one point. Paths 3 and 4 carry up to five more, and the page does not state how the paths combine to meet the six-point cap.
  2. The glare test offers three routes, and they are not interchangeable in practice. Path 2 lets each luminaire clear either a calculated luminance under 6,000 cd/m² between 45 and 90 degrees from nadir, or a UGR of 19 or lower by the tabular method for each space, or a UGR of 19 or lower by software modelling. The first route is a photometric property of a product; the second and third are properties of a layout. A catalogue sheet with a UGR figure on it does not, by itself, answer either of the last two.
  3. The colour test is a genuine either-or between CRI and TM-30. The text reads: "Use luminaires that have a color rendering index of at least 90 or that meet the color rendering requirements in Table 1, in accordance with Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) TM-30-20." Table 1 sets Rf at 78 or higher, Rg at 95 or higher, and Rcs,h1 between −1% and 15%. CRI 90 and the TM-30 triplet are alternatives, so a project does not have to report both — but a project that reports only CRI is reporting the metric the CIE has asked the market to move away from.
  4. LEED v5 names IES TM-30-20; IES now publishes TM-30-24. The credit page says TM-30-20 in the requirement sentence and in the table title. The ANSI catalogue record for ANSI/IES TM-30-24 lists that document as the most recent edition and lists ANSI/IES TM-30-20 as historical. The difference is a revision of the same method, not a different method — and a specification that writes TM-30 without an edition leaves the supplier to pick.
  5. The credit language is versioned by registration date, and it has already changed once. The addenda table for LEED v5 BD+C states that "The online version of the rating system takes precedent over the rating system portions of the LEED v5 project guidance and application", and that project teams adhere to the addenda effective at their registration date. The 20 February 2026 table records an EQc2 change — a distance in Option 2 corrected from 2,000 feet to 200 feet — which is a useful reminder that the page you quote today is a dated artefact.

Terms and units used below. Candela per square metre (cd/m²) = luminance, the brightness of a surface as seen from a direction; it is not illuminance and not flux. Nadir = the direction straight down from a luminaire, so the 45–90 degree band runs from 45 degrees below the horizontal to the horizontal itself. UGR = unified glare rating, a dimensionless discomfort-glare rating for an installation in a room. CRI (Ra) = colour rendering index, the metric the credit names; the construction of Ra, including its sample set and its treatment of saturated red, was not read from CIE 013.3-1995 for this article and is 未取證 here. Rf = CIE General Colour Fidelity Index, the 99-sample fidelity metric defined in CIE 224:2017 and computed in the CIECAM02-UCS space. Rg = gamut index, listed in Table 1 as an overall colour-volume measure; the captures establish the 95 floor and no more. Rcs,h1 = red local chroma shift, the hue-specific term Table 1 names. sDA300/50% = spatial daylight autonomy, the percentage of floor area reaching 300 lx for 50% of occupied hours. ASE1000,250 = annual sunlight exposure above 1,000 lx for 250 hours. VLT = visible light transmittance. TM-30 = the IES method, a technical memorandum, not a code.

The working detail

§D.1 The structure of Option 5, and where its points sit

Start with the shape of the credit.

EQc2 is titled Occupant Experience and is worth seven points in total. Its intent, in the credit's own words, is "To move beyond neutral or sufficient spaces toward human-centered design that supports customization, enjoyment, and emotional connections between people and the building, thus increasing the likelihood of consistent satisfaction and ongoing stewardship." Option 5, Lighting Environment, is the part of that intent that lands on the lighting designer.

The option is built from four paths, and the connectives between them are not uniform. The captured text places ‘AND/OR’ between Paths 1 and 2, and again between Paths 2 and 3. It places a plain ‘OR’ before Path 4. It lists Paths 1, 2 and 3 at one point each, Path 4 at one to four points, Option 5 at one to six points, and the credit at seven points.

The page does not explain how the connectives and the cap combine. Stacking semantics are 未取證 without USGBC guidance. What the page does establish is the connectives, the path values and the two ranges, and those are what a submission has to work with.

PathSubjectPoints
Path 1Solar glare control1
Path 2Quality electric lighting1
Path 3Proximity to windows for daylight access1
Path 4Daylight simulation1–4

Two consequences follow directly from that table.

The first is that electric lighting is worth one point. A project can meet every number in Path 2 and take one point for it. The larger awards are in Path 4, where the points are scaled to a simulated daylight metric.

The second is that the option is capped at six points while the listed paths total seven. The credit writes the option as "1–6 points". The page does not state a combination rule, so this article records the range and the path values and stops there.

The paths are also not all available to every rating system. Path 3 is marked ‘1 POINT, CORE AND SHELL ONLY’ in the text, and the option heading itself carries the note ‘Option 2. in Core and Shell’ — so the same requirements sit under a different option number in the Core and Shell rating system. A supplier who is asked “does this product meet LEED lighting?” is being asked a question that depends on which rating system the project registered under, and on which paths it is pursuing.

§D.2 Path 2's glare test: three routes, two of them about the room

Path 2 is one point, and it carries two requirements that must both be met: glare control and colour rendering. The glare half is written as follows.

> Electric light glare control > Each luminaire shall meet one of the following requirements: > - Have calculated luminance of less than 6,000 candela per square meter (cd/sq. m.) between 45 and 90 degrees from nadir. > - Achieve a unified glare rating (UGR) of 19 or lower using the UGR tabular method for each space. > - Achieve a UGR rating of 19 or lower using software modeling calculations of the designed lighting.

That third option closes with a parenthetical that points the reader to the NEMA White Paper on Unified Glare Rating; on the rendered page the pointer appears as a footnote number, which is why the linearised text shows it glued to the word 'Rating'.

Read the grammar rather than the thresholds, because the grammar is what a submission has to satisfy. The requirement is scoped to "regularly occupied spaces", and the subject of the first bullet is each luminaire. That is a product-level property: every luminaire in the scope has to clear it, not the installation on average. A luminaire with a bright exposed emitter at 60 degrees from nadir fails the first route even if the room as a whole is comfortable.

The second and third bullets change the subject from the luminaire to the space: "the UGR tabular method for each space", and software modelling "of the designed lighting". Those are layout tests. They depend on the room dimensions, the reflectances, the mounting height and the positions of the luminaires relative to the viewer. They cannot be answered from a datasheet, and a manufacturer who prints "UGR < 19" is printing a value for the reference room or rooms that were modelled — which is a legitimate product claim, but not the same object as a per-space rating.

The word "calculated" in the first bullet is worth pausing on as well. The credit asks for calculated luminance, so the evidence is photometric data evaluated over an angular band, not a site measurement. That means the luminaire's photometric file has to be dense enough in the 45–90 degree zone for the calculation to mean anything, and the calculation has to be reported per luminaire in a form a reviewer can follow.

The band itself is a geometric choice, and the captures establish the band, not the reasoning behind it. Between 45 and 90 degrees from nadir is the part of a luminaire's output that leaves the fitting close to horizontal. That geometry is general engineering commentary, not a finding from the credit page. Luminance in that band is what an occupant sees as brightness in the room rather than as light on the desk. A calculation over the whole sphere would not isolate it, which is why the credit names a band.

What the credit does not say is whether the reported value is the maximum luminance in the band, the average, or the value at a set of sample angles. The sentence is "calculated luminance of less than 6,000 candela per square meter between 45 and 90 degrees from nadir" and it stops there. A specification that intends to be checkable has to close that gap itself — state the quantity (maximum, or average, or both), the angular sampling, and the drive condition — and a submission that leaves it open invites a reviewer to read it the least favourable way.

There is a professional caution attached to UGR that a specification should carry. NEMA published its white paper on the subject as LS 20001-2021. The summary of it circulating at the time of publication says the paper "explains the original intent of Unified Glare Rating (UGR), its proper uses, and common misuses". The same summary states that "erroneous use as a luminaire-specific qualification metric can lead to glare inaccuracies for lighting designs". The IES then issued position statement PS-13-21 on that white paper. It states that "The Illuminating Engineering Society supports the underlying science contained within this document and its conclusions regarding the use and limitations of the Unified Glare Rating."

The practical meaning of that pair of documents is narrow but real: UGR is an installation-level quantity. A UGR figure stated on a product page carries no room assumptions unless the supplier prints them alongside it. LEED's text is consistent with that reading — it offers the tabular method per space and software modelling of the design, and it offers the per-luminaire route as a luminance test rather than a UGR test. When a submission is built, the per-luminaire route and the per-space route need different artefacts.

§D.3 Path 2's colour test: CRI 90, or three TM-30 numbers

The second half of Path 2 is one sentence and a three-row table.

> Color rendering > Use luminaires that have a color rendering index of at least 90 or that meet the color rendering requirements in Table 1, in accordance with Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) TM-30-20.

Table 1 is titled "Color Rendering Requirements Using IES TM-30-20" and its rows are:

MeasureSymbolRequirement
Fidelity indexRf78 or higher
Gamut indexRg95 or higher
Red Local Chroma ShiftRcs,h1−1% to 15%

Both halves are inside a single "or", so a project chooses. The choice is not cosmetic, because the two metric families measure different things and have different failure modes.

CRI is the metric the credit names first, and the credit sets one number on it: at least 90. The construction of Ra — its sample set, its treatment of saturated red, the role of R9 — was not read from CIE 013.3-1995 for this article. Any statement about what Ra rewards or misses is therefore 未取證 here. What the capture supports is narrower: the credit accepts a single CRI number and asks for no sample breakdown.

Rf is a different construction. The CIE's position statement records that Rf is computed over 99 samples, and that it is "generally considered to be a superior index than Ra". A floor of 78 on Rf is therefore not a restatement of 90 on CRI. The two indices use different sample sets and different calculations, so Rf 78 and Ra 90 are not interchangeable. The CIE comparison is a claim about what the index captures, not a statement that the two thresholds are equivalent.

So the two options in LEED's sentence are, in substance: one CRI number above 90, or three TM-30 numbers inside the Table 1 windows. The second asks for more evidence. The first is what most datasheets already carry.

One further piece of context belongs here, because it explains why a LEED submission is now an awkward moment for a CRI-only datasheet. The CIE's position statement on colour quality metrics, PS 002:2025 in its second edition, records three things. First, "The CIE now believes, therefore, that the time has come to start adopting the CIE General Colour Fidelity Index (Rf)". Second, CIE 013.3-1995 "will not be withdrawn until Rf is widely adopted in relevant regulations, specifications and standards". Third, during the interim, "the CIE recommends that parallel reporting of both the CIE General Colour Rendering Index and the CIE General Colour Fidelity Index should be encouraged when declaring colorimetric values for white light sources."

That is the standards body's own account of the transition. LEED's either-or sentence sits inside it: CRI is still sufficient for the point, and the CIE's stated preference is that the market reports both.

A TM-30 report is worth asking for in full rather than as three numbers on a datasheet. The ANSI record describes the method as quantifying "overall average properties (color fidelity, gamut area) and hue-specific properties (fidelity, chroma shift, hue shift)", and as presenting them "using numerical and graphical techniques". LEED's Table 1 selects three of those outputs. A specification that asks for the report gets the numerical set and the graphics alongside the three values that decide the point.

§D.4 LEED names TM-30-20; IES now publishes TM-30-24

The edition question is easy to miss and easy to fix.

LEED's requirement sentence says "in accordance with Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) TM-30-20", and the table above it is titled "Color Rendering Requirements Using IES TM-30-20". Both are dated references. The current edition of the same document is ANSI/IES TM-30-24: the ANSI catalogue record for it shows the status ‘Most Recent’, and the same record lists ANSI/IES TM-30-20 under the heading ‘Historical’.

The ANSI record describes the document's scope in these words: "IES-approved method for evaluating light source color rendition that takes an objective and statistical approach, quantifying both overall average properties (color fidelity, gamut area) and hue-specific properties (fidelity, chroma shift, hue shift) of a light source using numerical and graphical techniques." That description covers the three symbols in LEED's table: Rf for fidelity, Rg for gamut, Rcs,h1 for a hue-specific chroma shift. So the editions are the same method, revised — not two rival methods.

What the 2024 revision changed relative to the 2020 edition is not something this article can tell you. The IES store returns HTTP 403 to automated requests, and neither the TM-30-20 nor the TM-30-24 text was read for this piece. Whether the revision altered any calculation, any sample set, or any recommended criterion is 未取證 here, and a project that needs that answer has to buy the documents.

What a specification can do with the facts it does have is small and useful. Name the edition explicitly instead of writing "TM-30". State which edition the test report was computed against. Where the credit names TM-30-20 and the laboratory reports against TM-30-24, record both facts on the same sheet so a reviewer can see the basis of the numbers. A bare "TM-30 compliant" leaves the edition, the metrics and the thresholds all unstated, and a reviewer has to ask.

§D.5 Daylight: Path 3's proximity rule and Path 4's simulation

The two daylight paths in Option 5 are where the points are.

Path 3 is one point and is a layout test, not a lighting test:

> Design the interior layout to provide at least 30% of the regularly occupied area to be within a 20-foot (6-meter) horizontal distance of envelope glazing. The glazing must have a visible light transmittance above 40%. Regularly occupied areas with visual obstructions (incapable of providing a view to envelope glazing) should be excluded from the compliant area.

Three things decide the outcome: the floor-plan depth, the glazing's visible light transmittance, and whether the area in question has a view to the glazing rather than merely proximity to it. None of them is a luminaire property. Path 3 therefore needs the architect's floor plan and glazing schedule; it remains an interior-layout task, not a luminaire test.

Path 4 is the only part of Option 5 that scales, from one point to four:

> Perform a daylight simulation analysis for the project to understand and optimize access to daylight and visual comfort. Use the calculation protocols in IES LM-83-23 with the following clarifications:

The clarifications do most of the work. The simulation must report sDA300/50% and ASE1000,250 "for each regularly occupied space in the project". Those two metrics are spatial daylight autonomy at 300 lx for 50% of the occupied hours, and annual sunlight exposure above 1,000 lx for 250 hours. One substitution is permitted: "sDA150/50% may be used for areas without visual tasks with design targets of 225 lux." The point total is then read from the average across total regularly occupied floor area. One prohibition is explicit: "Do not exclude spaces based on annual sunlight exposure (ASE)." Projects do not get to drop their over-lit perimeter from the average.

Two further sentences shape the modelling brief. Where a space has "ASEnet(1000,250h) greater than 20%", the project must "identify how the space is designed to address glare" — glare here entering not as a UGR number but as a consequence of direct sun. And the point table is:

Average sDA300/50% or sDA150/50%Points
≥ 40%1
≥ 55%2
≥ 65%3
≥ 75%4

A note on what this means for a lighting supplier rather than a daylight consultant. The interior lighting in a daylit space changes the simulated result only insofar as the model includes it; the thresholds are daylight metrics. So a project pursuing Path 4 is buying a simulation, not a luminaire — and a supplier asked to "help with the LEED daylight points" should say so rather than quote a product.

The prohibition on excluding spaces is worth more attention than it usually gets. Annual sunlight exposure measures the hours in which a space receives too much sun, so the floor area that fails ASE is systematically the perimeter — the most desirable area in the building and the one a leasing plan wants to count. Removing it from the average would raise sDA and flatter the result, and the credit closes that route in one sentence. A project whose perimeter cannot meet ASE and whose occupant needs glare control has a shading design problem, and the credit's instruction is to describe how the design addresses glare rather than to delete the space from the calculation.

§D.6 Path 1: solar glare, and why it sits apart from the electric lighting

Path 1 is one sentence and one point:

> Provide manual or automatic (with manual override) glare-control devices in all regularly occupied spaces that will receive direct or reflected sun penetration. Spaces designed intentionally for direct sunlight may be excluded.

Read against Path 2, it is a different kind of requirement. Path 2's glare test is about the luminaires the project installs; Path 1's is about what the occupant can deploy against the sun. The evidence is a shading schedule and a control description, not a photometric file. The manual-override wording also means an automated facade that the occupant cannot override does not meet the sentence as written.

The exception is worth noting for its narrowness: spaces "designed intentionally for direct sunlight" may be excluded. An atrium designed to admit sun is inside that exception; an open-plan office that happens to be bright is not.

There is also a maintenance question the sentence implies. A manual blind that is never lowered satisfies the equipment requirement and does not deliver the glare control; an automatic system whose override nobody can find is in the same position. Path 1 is one of the few places in the credit where the evidence is partly behavioural, and a commissioning note that records what the occupant is expected to do with the device is more useful to a reviewer than a product cut sheet.

§D.7 The page you quote is dated, and the credit is versioned by registration

A submission built on a screenshot of a web page has a problem that procurement teams discover late: the page changes.

USGBC publishes addenda to the LEED v5 rating systems, and the BD+C addenda table states the rule plainly — "The online version of the rating system takes precedent over the rating system portions of the LEED v5 project guidance and application" — with the consequence that project teams adhere to the rating system and its addenda as in effect at the project's registration date. The table in force at the time of writing is dated 20 February 2026. Searching it for EQc2 returns a small number of rows, and the ones we found concern Option 2 (a corrected distance in the adaptable-environment strategy), EQc3, EQc4 and EQc5. No Option 5 lighting row appears in that table.

Two conclusions follow, and they are modest. First, the six numeric limits quoted in this article are stable across the addenda published to date — as far as that one table shows. Second, and more important for a project team: the version that governs is the one in effect when the project registered, not the newest one on the website. A team that starts designing in 2026 against a page captured in 2025, or the reverse, is quoting the wrong document. The fix is to record the captured page, its date, and the addenda table in force.

That fix is three lines in the project file, and it is worth writing down because it is the only part of this article that a project controls. Line one: the credit page, captured as a file, with the date of capture. Line two: the addenda table in force on that date, with its publication date. Line three: the registration date the project will use to decide which of the two governs. A reviewer who is handed those three lines can check the submission against the right document; a reviewer who is handed a hyperlink to a page that has since changed cannot check anything.

The date of the rating system's own launch is relevant background here. Trade press reported the launch in April 2025 — "The U.S. Green Building Council has officially launched LEED v5", published 29 April 2025 — and the credit page itself now states, in its footer block, that LEED v5 is "Currently available for BD+C, ID+C, and O+M." The launch date is a trade-press fact, not something we read on a USGBC page; the availability sentence is first-party.

§D.8 The submission pack: which artefact answers which sentence

The practical question for a project team is which document closes which sentence. The table below maps the requirement text to the artefact, and separates product evidence from project evidence — the distinction that decides who has to produce it.

#Requirement sentenceArtefactProduced by
1"calculated luminance of less than 6,000 candela per square meter (cd/sq. m.) between 45 and 90 degrees from nadir"A luminance table over the 45–90 degree band, computed from a goniophotometric test file and stated per luminaire. A project may also ask for separate rows per CCT and output configuration; the credit does not require that breakdownManufacturer (test data)
2"Achieve a unified glare rating (UGR) of 19 or lower using the UGR tabular method for each space."A short report per room: room dimensions, surface reflectances, mounting height, luminaire positions, the tabular configuration usedLighting designer
3"using software modeling calculations of the designed lighting"The software model, the UGR grid output, and a statement that the modelling follows the NEMA white paper LEED citesLighting designer
4"color rendering index of at least 90"CRI test report with Ra stated. A project may also ask for R9 to be stated separately; the credit asks only for the CRI valueManufacturer (test data)
5Rf 78 or higher, Rg 95 or higher, Rcs,h1 between −1% and 15% (Table 1 cells, restated)TM-30 report showing Rf, Rg and Rcs,h1, with the edition used named on the sheetManufacturer (test data)
6"manual or automatic (with manual override) glare-control devices"Shading schedule and control description, with the override statedArchitect / controls
7"at least 30% of the regularly occupied area to be within a 20-foot (6-meter) horizontal distance of envelope glazing" and "visible light transmittance above 40%"Floor plan with the 6 m band drawn, glazing schedule with VLT figuresArchitect
8"Use the calculation protocols in IES LM-83-23"Simulation report with sDA300/50% and ASE1000,250 per regularly occupied space, plus the glare narrative where ASEnet exceeds 20%Daylight consultant

Two rows deserve comment because they are where submissions get thin.

Row 1 is the fragile one. A manufacturer's datasheet usually publishes flux, wattage, efficacy, CCT, CRI and a beam angle; a luminance table over 45–90 degrees is rarer, because it requires reducing the photometric file to the band rather than quoting a peak value. If the project takes the per-luminaire route, that table is the evidence, and a single "UGR < 19" line on a product page does not substitute for it.

Row 4 is the common one. A datasheet that says "CRI 90" without R9 gives one number and no R9 figure. It satisfies the credit's first option, because the text asks only for a CRI of at least 90. A project that wants R9 has to ask for it separately, because the credit does not.

This is the one place where a house standard can be stricter than the credit without contradicting it. Our own catalogue standard states CRI 90 with R9 at 50 or above, which is a floor the credit does not impose; a project that specifies only the credit's sentence is entitled to a CRI 90 product with an R9 of 20, and will get one. The general point is worth keeping separate from LEED: a rating system sets the minimum for a point, and a specification sets what the building actually gets.

One item is deliberately absent from the table: no requirement in Path 2 mentions dimming states, colour consistency across output, or flicker. Those matter to occupant comfort and they appear elsewhere in LEED's indoor-environment credits, but they are not in this option's text, and we do not add them to it. A specification that folds them in is welcome to; a submission that claims them as EQc2 Option 5 requirements is wrong.

§D.9 What SUMLINK publishes today, and what we do not

A supplier's article about a specification test is worth little if it does not apply the test to the supplier. Here is that application.

What the catalogue states at the time of writing, on the /catalog page captured for this piece, comes down to three things. Spec sheets "lead with the parameters driving HCL selection — M/P Ratio, Flicker %, SVM, Δu'v' — beside the standard fields". IES files and BOM specs are available for download. The verification mark is explained as "SUMLINK Verified marks the SKUs we have tested ourselves." Two products carry glare claims in the form a designer recognises: "UGR <19 across the arc" on one, "UGR <13 across all CCT states" on another.

The /about page states the catalogue standard as "CRI 90 with R9 >= 50 as catalog standard". It describes the verification programme as one where "SUMLINK Verified marks the batches we have measured against IES LM-79 and CIE S 026 ourselves."

What the same pages do not carry: a luminance table stated over the 45–90 degree band in cd/m²; Rf, Rg or Rcs,h1 values from a TM-30 report; or any per-space UGR calculation, which is a project-side deliverable in any case. Those three absences are stated plainly because they are precisely the three artefacts rows 1, 3 and 5 of the table above call for. The captures also do not state the room assumptions behind the catalogue's UGR figures; their calculation basis, and their suitability as per-space evidence, are 未取證. This assessment covers the /catalog and /about captures dated 2026-11-04, not the individual PDF spec sheets or the underlying test reports; SKU-level luminance and TM-30 claims are therefore 未取證.

The direction of travel is not complicated. A luminance table and a TM-30 report are laboratory outputs that a manufacturer either commissions or does not; publishing them per SKU is a data-plumbing decision, not a redesign. Until they are published, the honest sentence for a supplier to write is the one this article has been circling: we publish UGR values without their room assumptions, and CRI with R9, and a project needing the per-luminaire luminance route or the TM-30 route must ask us for the test data.

§D.10 The answer in one paragraph

LEED v5's EQc2 Option 5 gives electric lighting one point, and that point requires both halves of Path 2. The glare half is either a per-luminaire luminance below 6,000 cd/m² between 45 and 90 degrees from nadir, or a per-space UGR of 19 or lower by tabular method or by software modelling. The colour half is either CRI 90, or TM-30-20's Rf 78, Rg 95 and Rcs,h1 between −1% and 15%. The daylight paths are where the option's points scale, and they are simulation and layout work, not product data. LEED names the 2020 edition of TM-30 while IES publishes the 2024 edition, so a specification should name the edition it means. Because the credit is versioned by registration date, the number a project is graded against is the one in force when it registered. The useful habit is therefore not memorising 6,000, 19 and 90, but capturing the page, its date, and the data that proves each sentence.

Frequently asked questions

Six questions on what the credit asks for, which test answers which requirement, and which edition of the standard applies.

What is LEED v5 EQc2 Option 5, in one sentence?

It is the Lighting Environment option inside the Occupant Experience credit of LEED v5 for Building Design and Construction, worth one to six points, built from four paths: solar glare control, quality electric lighting, proximity to windows, and daylight simulation.

Does a CRI of 90 meet the LEED v5 lighting requirement?

On the colour half of Path 2, yes. The requirement is written as "a color rendering index of at least 90 or ... Table 1, in accordance with Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) TM-30-20", so CRI alone satisfies that sentence. It does not satisfy Path 2 by itself, because Path 2 also requires glare control.

Should I use the 6,000 cd/m² luminance limit or UGR 19?

Use the luminance test for each luminaire, or the UGR test for each space. The luminance limit is a product test — a calculated value for each luminaire between 45 and 90 degrees from nadir. The UGR limits are installation tests — the tabular method for each space, or software modelling of the design. A manufacturer can supply the first; only the design team can supply the second.

Does LEED require TM-30-20 or TM-30-24?

The credit text names IES TM-30-20, and its table is titled against that edition. IES now publishes TM-30-24 as the current edition, with TM-30-20 listed as historical in the ANSI catalogue. A specification should name the edition it intends; a test report should name the edition it was computed against.

How many points is lighting worth in LEED v5?

One point for Path 2 in its own right, inside an option worth one to six points, inside a credit worth seven. Paths 1, 2 and 3 are one point each and Path 4 is one to four, so the option's range is capped below the arithmetic sum of its paths.

Can a luminaire datasheet earn the daylight points?

No. Path 3 is a floor-plan and glazing test — 30% of regularly occupied area within 20 feet (6 meters) of envelope glazing with VLT above 40% — and Path 4 is a simulation reporting sDA300/50% and ASE1000,250 per regularly occupied space under IES LM-83-23. Neither is a luminaire property.

Call to action

Request BOM & Spec Sheets — send the Luminaire Schedule and the space list, and name the paths being attempted. We return the glare test for each luminaire, the UGR basis for each space, the colour metrics at the edition the specification names, and the daylight simulation inputs, as far as the project has fixed them: https://www.sumlink.hk/catalog

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