Daylighting Handbook I: Fundamentals, Designing with the Sun
About this book
Daylighting Handbook I: Fundamentals and Designing with the Sun by Christoph Reinhart is a landmark contribution to the literature on daylighting in architecture and building design. Published in 2014, the first volume of this two-part series provides architects, designers, engineers, and students with a rigorous yet accessible foundation for understanding and applying natural light in the built environment. The book bridges the gap between scientific principles and design practice, making it an indispensable reference for professionals who wish to move beyond intuition and rule of thumb toward evidence-based daylighting design.
The book begins with a thorough grounding in the physics of daylight. Reinhart explains the nature of solar radiation, the geometry of the sun's path across the sky, and the optical properties of the atmosphere that determine the quality and quantity of light reaching building surfaces. He introduces the concept of the sky luminance distribution and explains how different sky conditions — from overcast to clear — affect the character of daylight entering a building.
These foundational chapters give readers the scientific vocabulary and conceptual framework needed to understand more advanced topics later in the book. A major strength of the handbook is its treatment of climate-based daylighting metrics. Reinhart played a central role in developing climate-based daylight modeling (CBDM), a methodology that uses real weather data to simulate daylighting conditions over the course of a full year rather than relying on simplified static calculations.
The book explains this methodology in detail and introduces key metrics such as Daylight Autonomy (DA), Useful Daylight Illuminance (UDI), and Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA), which are now widely adopted in the profession and embedded in rating systems like LEED v4 and the WELL Building Standard. Reinhart's authoritative explanation of these metrics — their definitions, interpretations, and appropriate applications — is one of the most valuable aspects of the book. The handbook gives careful attention to the design of windows, skylights, light shelves, and other apertures as daylighting elements.
Reinhart explains how the size, placement, orientation, and glazing properties of openings affect the distribution and quality of daylight within a space. He addresses common daylighting challenges such as glare, excessive contrast, solar heat gain, and the visual discomfort that can arise from poorly designed daylighting schemes. The book provides practical guidance on how to balance these competing concerns through thoughtful aperture design and the use of shading and light-redirecting devices.
Building simulation is a central theme throughout the handbook. Reinhart introduces readers to the tools and methods used to model daylighting performance computationally, including Radiance-based simulation engines and the DAYSIM software that he developed at the National Research Council Canada. He explains the inputs required for accurate simulation — geometry, material reflectances, sky models, and occupancy patterns — and discusses how to interpret and validate simulation results.
This emphasis on simulation literacy reflects Reinhart's conviction that computational tools should be integrated into the design process from the earliest stages, not used only to verify completed designs. The book also addresses the relationship between daylighting and energy performance. Reinhart explains how effective daylighting design can reduce dependence on electric lighting, lowering energy consumption and operational carbon emissions.
He discusses the interaction between daylighting and heating and cooling loads, noting that maximizing daylight admission must be balanced against solar heat gain control, particularly in hot climates. Sections on dynamic glazing, electrochromic glass, and automated shading systems illustrate how technology can help optimize this balance. Human factors receive significant attention.
Reinhart draws on research in visual comfort, circadian biology, and environmental psychology to explain how daylight affects occupant well-being, productivity, and health. He discusses the importance of daylight for regulating circadian rhythms and the growing body of evidence linking access to daylight with improved outcomes in workplaces, schools, hospitals, and residential settings. This human-centered perspective elevates the book beyond a purely technical manual and situates daylighting design within a broader agenda of creating healthy, life-enhancing built environments.
The handbook is richly illustrated with diagrams, simulation images, and case study photographs that support the text and demonstrate concepts in action. Case studies drawn from diverse building types and climates show how the principles and tools described in the book have been applied in real projects, grounding the theoretical content in architectural reality. Daylighting Handbook I remains the definitive introductory and intermediate-level reference on the subject.
Together with the second volume (2018), which addresses advanced topics including complex fenestration systems and urban daylighting, it constitutes the most complete treatment of daylighting available in English. The handbook is widely used in university courses on building science and environmental design and is a standard reference on the desks of daylighting consultants and sustainability-focused architects worldwide.