Abstract
Lighting for outdoor advertising is very common feature of building facades as they provide the information and commercial identification. As the interest of improving street beautification more widely, application of various lighting technologies has been develop for advertisement such as electric sign board and signage. Furthermore, the installation of higher sign luminance than needed has many negative consequences, including higher energy consumption and light pollution. There are now no standard for outdoor advertisements in terms of luminance, and installation of indiscreet outdoor advertisement without luminance consideration is becoming more commonplace. This study was to evaluate the luminous characteristics of outdoor advertising as a function of sign and building facade luminance, luminance ratio. Data were collected on 8 electric sign boards, 20 internally illuminated, externally illuminated, neon, and channel letter signs and 4 commercial areas. Photometric measurements were taken by CS-100(Minolta) and ProMetric-1400(Radiant Imaging) for various sign modes and sign design. Also luminance of building facades were analyzed according with CIE standard of maximum obtrusive light permitted for exterior lighting installations. The findings are as follows; (1) There were excessive luminance of electric sign boards that could affect adjacent building facade and night sky luminance. (2) Sings that are externally illuminated providing an inappropriate amount of light on to the outer surface of the sign caused higher building facade luminance and potential of unnecessary glare.
