WELL Building Standard Explained

Below is my contribution to the September issue of tED Magazine, the official publication of the NAED. Reprinted with permission.

Based on research suggesting a correlation between building design and human health and wellness, in 2013 Delos created the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which launched the WELL Building Standard. As of March 2019, more than 1,500 projects encompassing 315 million sq.ft. in 48 countries have been designed to WELL certification.

The WELL building rating system covers new and existing buildings, new and existing interiors, and core and shell projects. Designers gain a WELL rating for their projects by satisfying prerequisite features and then achieving points via a series of optimization categories, including lighting. Currently, two versions of WELL are available for implementation: WELL 1.0 and WELL 2.0, which launched as a pilot in May 2018.

For the building industry, WELL offers an objective rating system similar to LEED, while focusing on wellness instead of sustainability. For the lighting industry, it provides a roadmap to lighting quality while confirming the correlation between good lighting and human wellness. For electrical distributors, it poses a defined premium lighting market segment with a specific set of prerequisites and incentives.

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