A town council receives three offers for the lighting of its multi-sports hall. The amounts range from single to double. None of the three documents mentions the same lighting class, and two of them do not mention it at all.
What the EN 12193 standard covers
The EN 12193 standard deals with the lighting of sports facilities, indoors as well as outdoors. It covers several dozen disciplines, each with its own table, and also addresses the emergency lighting intended for evacuating playing areas and stands.
Its principle differs from that of building standards. The level of requirement depends on the level of play and on the presence of spectators, not on the type of room. The same hall therefore changes class according to the matches it hosts.
Classes I, II and III: what each level corresponds to
The standard distinguishes three classes, defined by the level of competition and by the distance at which spectators follow the action. The larger and more distant the audience, the higher the required illuminance and uniformity.
Class | Level of play | Spectators | Consequence for the project |
|---|---|---|---|
Class III | Ordinary training, school sport, recreational practice, local competition | None or very few | Lowest illuminance of the three classes, most lenient uniformity |
Class II | County or regional competition, high-level training | Medium number of spectators | Intermediate illuminance, tighter uniformity |
Class I | National and international competition | Many, with long viewing distances | Highest illuminance, most demanding uniformity and colour rendering |
The figures associated with each class vary from one discipline to another. For indoor team sports, the orders of magnitude range from about 200 lux in class III to 500 or 750 lux in class I. The applicable value is read in the table for the discipline concerned, in the current version of the standard.
The role of federation regulations alongside the standard
The standard provides the technical foundation. The federations, for their part, publish regulations for classifying facilities, which determine the right to host matches at a given level. The two documents are read together.
The federation regulations generally add three things: an imposed measuring grid, a frequency of checks and a standard report to be submitted. They can also raise the illuminance level beyond the standard for certain divisions. We have detailed these requirements in our article on the illuminance levels required by sports federations.
Horizontal illuminance, uniformity and colour rendering
Three quantities structure each table of the standard. The average horizontal illuminance to be maintained on the playing area gives the general level. Uniformity, expressed as the ratio between the minimum illuminance and the average illuminance, ensures that no part of the pitch becomes a black hole. Colour rendering determines how legible the shirts, the ball and the lines of play are.
Uniformity remains the value most often missed in renovations. A point-by-point replacement of old floodlights with narrower-beam LED floodlights raises the average illuminance and degrades uniformity, because the original layout has not been revised. The acceptance check reveals it, often too late.
Colour rendering deserves the same attention. Lighting with a low rendering index flattens neighbouring colours: two similar shirts become hard to tell apart from the stands, and video capture gives washed-out colours. The requirement therefore rises with the class, and it is checked on the luminaire’s data sheet before ordering, not on the pitch on the evening of the first match.
The special case of video broadcasting
As soon as video capture is planned, the reasoning changes plane. The camera does not measure illuminance on the ground: it records the light reflected by the players towards its lens. The requirement therefore shifts to vertical illuminance, assessed in the direction of the cameras and not towards the ceiling.
Three other points become critical: stability of the flux, absence of flicker visible in slow motion and high colour rendering so that the colours of the kit remain true on screen. These requirements translate into specific families of floodlights and power supplies, to be identified before costing and not during the trials.
Outdoors: glare for local residents and obtrusive light
On a stadium or an outdoor tennis court, the standard adds glare control, quantified by the GR rating at defined observer positions, with a maximum value of 50. This rating deals with the comfort of players and officials during play.
Light that leaves the venue falls under another text. The order of 27 December 2018 on the prevention of light nuisance governs the share of flux emitted above the horizontal, the switch-off times of outdoor sports facilities and the colour temperature, capped at 3000 K in the general case and lowered in protected natural areas. These constraints are dealt with through the choice of optic and the tilt of the floodlights, not by a last-minute adjustment on site.
Placing your facility before drafting specifications
The approach comes down to four questions. What is the highest level of competition hosted during the year, and not the usual level. Will there be spectators, and at what distance from the playing area. Is video capture planned in the medium term. Must the facility be classified by a federation, and under which regulations.
The answers give the class, hence the line of the standard, hence the level to write into the specifications. The offers then become comparable, since they all respond to the same performance and not to different product references. The framework for checking these requirements is detailed on our page dedicated to the compliance of lighting installations.
On the equipment side, the range of luminaires for sports and leisure and the family of LED floodlights provide the photometric files needed for the calculation, while our lighting solutions by sector of activity cover the most common configurations.
To place your facility in the right class before going out to tender, request a visit and a costed study from the contact page.
