Influence of Light Reflection from the Wall and Ceiling Due to Color Changes in the Indoor Environment of the Selected Hall

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is well written and quite informative to the reader. It provides useful information on a subject which is of great concern although well covered in the literature. The abstract is very extensive and does not provide sufficient information on the findings of the work. It will be appropriate to restructure it cutting out unnecessary information. The photographs can be reduced together with some tables. This information can be provided with other appropriate means.

The conclusions can also be improved by a better focus on the results deleting information which is given in the previous sections.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

The paper is well written and quite informative to the reader. It provides useful information on a subject which is of great concern although well covered in the literature.

Thank you for your positive opinion.

The abstract is very extensive and does not provide sufficient information on the findings of the work. It will be appropriate to restructure it cutting out unnecessary information.

We tried to modify the abstract to make it shorter and to bring new information included in the article.

Abstract: The main goal of the paper is to evaluate the effect of color change of the interior surfaces of the selected hall on the level of daylight represented by the DF factor. A single-store hall was chosen as the reference building, in which daylight falls through the side windows and a skylight at roof level. Gradually, the measurement of the level of daylight in the real state of the building (in situ) was carried out. The measurement took place when the external boundary conditions of the measurement were met (external state of the sky). A survey was conducted among users, which they consider important in the visual perception of the environment, what colors would be suitable for the color solution of the walls, ceiling and floor in the working environment of the hall. The evaluation of the respondents, who consider the color of the floor, was interesting, and several agreed that the floor should be brown. After debugging the model for the simulation, based on the actual state of the measurement, simulation calculations were performed with selected surface colors in the interior of the hall. Computational simulations were performed for changing calculation boundary conditions. Daylight DF factors (%) were evaluated, namely minimum, maximum and average DF value for 15 selected simulations. The calculations were performed in the RADIANCE simulation program. Simulations include • the change in the surface color of the simulated wall and the current ceiling surface color • the color of the simulated ceiling surface and the current wall surface color • the color of the simulated wall and ceiling at the same time. The floor color did not change during the evaluation; it was considered brown. Based on the evaluation of AHP, evaluations of the significance and comparability of colored areas were performed. The value of the average DF was chosen as the most important, the less significant minimum DF value was chosen and the maximum DF value was considered in the last place. The results show that the white, gray, green or yellow walls, white ceiling and brown floor are rated as the most suitable for choosing the color of the surrounding surfaces of the interior surfaces in the considered hall.

The photographs can be reduced together with some tables. This information can be provided with other appropriate means.

Yes, thanks for the advice, we have reduced the photos as well as edited them, as well as some tables.

The conclusions can also be improved by a better focus on the results deleting information which is given in the previous sections.

Thank you for your recommendation, the conclusions have been adjusted according to your instructions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article aims at analysing “the comfort and perception of an indoor industrial building due to changes in the reflectivity of surfaces and to show how the surrounding surfaces affect the light climate during daylighting” (lines 122/123) but in the end it presents a series of simulations to compute the daylight factor in a factory. Workers of the factory are interviewed to understand their “visual perception of the environment and what colours would suit them in the color solution of the working environment” (lines 387/388). Ironically, the results of the interviews is that the colour of the floor is the one with the highest impact for the workers (Line 390) and is never changed in the simulations. It’s almost impossible to understand how the AHP method during has been used during the interviews. 

Although the computation of DF for a factory is an interesting exercise, the results do not add anything to the knowledge in the field. 

Line 45: A reference may help a lot in understanding where the figures came from

Line 139: It’s not clear the relationship between the three references and the text “Despite the above findings, we conducted a survey in the hall, where the walls are not covered with any tiles, boards or other surfaces”

Figure 1 is not clear at all.

Figure 2 may be reshaped to give a better idea of the process. There are a couple of “calculation” boxes that don’t specify what are the “calculation”, one of these comes right after the “Calculation using the Radiance simulation tool”. The process starts from “Start” and ends in “User opinion”, then another process start from “Color change option the floor color is constant color change” box (what a name for a box!) and ends in “End”

Figure 3 has two captions and is not referenced in the text

Line 193: please check the reference to figure 4a, no control points are visible in that figure

Figure 6: the name of X axis of the 2D graph is missing

Line 281: The sentence “When adapting the interior: would most change the color of the surfaces: 1. floor, 2. wall, and finally 3. ceiling” is incomprehensible. There are even two colons in the same sentence 

Line 288: I wouldn’t call AHP a “statistical calculation method” although the computation of the Random Index to check the consistency of the matrix has been done using statistical techniques

Line 289: Is it a sub-paragraph title?

Table 4 and Figure 8 give the same information. I’d rather choose one of them (either the table or the figure). Please check the name of the columns in Table 4, the DFaverage is bigger than the DFmax

Line 350: much more details on how the interviews where done should be given. Were the workers ask to make a pairwise comparison of the different combination of colours used in the simulation? How much is the Consistency Index of the pairwise comparing matrix? How much is the ratio CI/RI? 

Line 355: A thoroughly explanation on how the DF values of each simulation have been ranked (Figure 9) may help the reader

Line 369: the sentence “These are simulations, as already mentioned sim10, sim7, sim6.” is quite obscure

Author Response

Reviewer 2

The article aims at analysing “the comfort and perception of an indoor industrial building due to changes in the reflectivity of surfaces and to show how the surrounding surfaces affect the light climate during daylighting” (lines 122/123) but in the end it presents a series of simulations to compute the daylight factor in a factory.

Thanks, we fixed lines 122/123:

Lines 122/123: The aim of this paper is to analyze the comfort and perception of an indoor industrial building due to changes in the reflectivity of surfaces and to show how the surrounding surfaces affect the light climate during daylighting.  

Workers of the factory are interviewed to understand their “visual perception of the environment and what colours would suit them in the color solution of the working environment” (lines 387/388).

Lines 387 a 389 A survey of 57 users was conducted, which they consider important in the visual perception of the environment and what colors would suit them in the color solution of the working environment.

The evaluation of the questionnaire was not the subject of this paper, only some data.

Ironically, the results of the interviews is that the colour of the floor is the one with the highest impact for the workers (Line 390) and is never changed in the simulations.

Thanks for the comment. We meant that the workers are looking at the floor, and they themselves said that they would like the floor to be brown as appropriate. Therefore, this value does not change in the calculations.

It’s almost impossible to understand how the AHP method during has been used during the interviews. 

The AHP method was not used during the interviews. This method was used only to evaluate the simulations, where we assigned importance to the individual factors, as shown in the graphs. The weights to the ratios DF_average / DF_min / DF_max (%) varied. See new Figure 9a-9).:

Although the computation of DF for a factory is an interesting exercise, the results do not add anything to the knowledge in the field. 

The results of this paper contribute to the recognition that a change in color changes the DF, which results in importance for the creation of interior space. Although DF does not change significantly if we evaluate the results of simulations using AHP, we get the weight of the importance of the factors DFaver, DFmin, DFmax. The standard specifies DFmin, but we can only reach this value in a certain zone. It is similar with DFmax. We will reach this value only in some place, which does not affect the overall zone for human activity. The value of DFaverage must be considered the most suitable, which will ensure the necessary uniformity of lighting. Even when evaluating the importance of the values obtained, it acquires the greatest weight in evaluating the quality of the indoor light climate.

Line 45: A reference may help a lot in understanding where the figures came from.

The link can be very helpful in understanding where the data comes from. We have added literature to the link:

8/ Yu, X., & Su, Y. (2015). Daylight availability assessment and its potential energy saving estimation–A literature review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 52, 494-503.

Thank you for the proposal, we have also added literature that deals with similar issues and has been published in APPL SCIENCES since 2019-2021. Here are some of them:

9/ Wijaya, D. D. A., Utami, S. S., Adi, G. S., & Prayitno, B. (2019, December). Optimization of Natural and Artificial Lighting System Design in the Library of the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Gadjah Mada. In 2019 IEEE 6th International Conference on Engineering Technologies and Applied Sciences (ICETAS) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

10/ Bunjongjit, S., Ananwattanaporn, S., Ngaopitakkul, A., Jettanasen, C., & Patcharoen, T. (2020). Design and application of daylight-based lighting controller on LED luminaire. Applied Sciences, 10(10), 3415.

11/ Tagliabue, L. C., Re Cecconi, F., Moretti, N., Rinaldi, S., Bellagente, P., & Ciribini, A. L. C. (2020). Security assessment of urban areas through a gis-based analysis of lighting data generated by IoT sensors. Applied Sciences, 10(6), 2174.

12/ Mataloto, B., Mendes, H., & Ferreira, J. C. (2020). Things2people interaction toward energy savings in shared spaces using BIM. Applied Sciences, 10(16), 5709.

13/ Albatayneh, A., Atieh, H., Jaradat, M., Al-Omary, M., Zaquot, M., Juaidi, A., ... & Manzano-Agugliaro, F. (2021). The impact of modern artificial lighting on the optimum window-to-wall ratio of residential buildings in Jordan. Applied Sciences, 11(13), 5888

Line 139: It’s not clear the relationship between the three references and the text “Despite the above findings, we conducted a survey in the hall, where the walls are not covered with any tiles, boards or other surfaces”

In the above articles, the authors also deal with the internal environment bordered without modifications (boards, paintings, notice boards ...) only a clean surface plastered painted. This is a literature in which the authors deal with industrial objects where there are such surfaces. It is different from schools or office buildings, where there are boards, paintings, notice boards, etc. on the walls, which cover the inner surfaces of the walls.

Figure 1 is not clear at all.

Thanks for the comment, we edited Figure 1 and explained why we placed it there.

Figure 2 may be reshaped to give a better idea of the process. There are a couple of “calculation” boxes that don’t specify what are the “calculation”, one of these comes right after the “Calculation using the Radiance simulation tool”. The process starts from “Start” and ends in “User opinion”, then another process start from “Color change option the floor color is constant color change” box (what a name for a box!) and ends in “End”

Thanks for the comment, we have modified and incorporated the reviewer's comments in Figure 2

Figure 3 has two captions and is not referenced in the text.

Thanks for the comment, we fixed it. Recommended values of light reflectance from individual surfaces are shown in Figure 3.

Line 193: please check the reference to figure 4a, no control points are visible in that figure

Thanks for the comment, we added. https://www.google.sk/maps/search/Ko%C5%A1ice,+Park+Komensk%C3%A9ho/@48.7325581,21.246384,581m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1

Coordinates: 48.733297544044525, 21.24562225258516

Figure 6: the name of X axis of the 2D graph is missing

Thanks for the comment, we added.

Line 281: The sentence “When adapting the interior: would most change the color of the surfaces: 1. floor, 2. wall, and finally 3. ceiling” is incomprehensible. There are even two colons in the same sentence.

Thanks for the comment, we've edited it. In the questionnaires, the respondents stated that the most important thing for them is the color of the floor, it is probably because they look most at the floor. The most answer was that they could imagine the floor as brown.

Line 288: I wouldn’t call AHP a “statistical calculation method” although the computation of the Random Index to check the consistency of the matrix has been done using statistical techniques

Thanks for the comment, we would change the full title of this chapter to Analysis of the obtained data using selected methods prípadne. Obtained data analysis using selected methods.

Line 289: Is it a sub-paragraph title?

Thanks for the comment, we deleted it.

Table 4 and Figure 8 give the same information. I’d rather choose one of them (either the table or the figure). Please check the name of the columns in Table 4, the DFaverage is bigger than the DFmax

Thank you for the recommendation, but despite the above, we have kept both the table and the picture, in our opinion it is clearer.

DF markings - we have made a correction.

Line 350: much more details on how the interviews where done should be given.

Thanks for the comment, but the questionnaire was quite extensive. This will be the content of another work, where subjective factors and feelings will be taken into account.

Were the workers ask to make a pairwise comparison of the different combination of colours used in the simulation?

No, they weren't.

How much is the Consistency Index of the pairwise comparing matrix?

the Consistency Index of the pairwise comparing matrix is 0,065 and therefore the matrix we considered consistent enough is no more than 0.1 (compared to a value of 0.1). It was therefore not necessary to reconsider the comparisons of the criteria and to determine a different ratio of importance.

How much is the ratio CI/RI? 

Ratio CI/RI = 0,195

Line 355: A thoroughly explanation on how the DF values of each simulation have been ranked (Figure 9) may help the reader

Only a one-step analysis of the measured values was performed, because we examined the effect of changes in the determination of the weights of individual DF values. 18 changes and settings of these weights were made. For the example, we chose 7 and then in more detail 3 weight distributions (60/30/10, 80/10/10, 50/40/10). However, with each change, the result was approximately the same, so the arrangement of the simulations performed is appropriate. The arrangement of the columns means a percentage approximation to the meaning (the greatest meaning is 100%, ie when the values approach 0.12 i.e. 12%. The sum of all columns in a given color (weight distribution) is 1.0 i.e. 100%. ranked from the most significant to the smallest.

Line 369: the sentence “These are simulations, as already mentioned sim10, sim7, sim6.” is quite obscure.

Thanks for the feedback, we have modified the sentence.

As already mentioned as the most suitable, i. the most important are sim10, sim7, sim6, because their results are the most significant.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

There are just a few issues with the text format, like the one in lines 330, 357, 358, and 359.

Also, in figure 9. the equation presented from the trend line corresponds to a ratio. Why is not the other equation shown??? Whom trend is the equation??

Author Response

Reviewer 3

There are just a few issues with the text format, like the one in lines 330, 357, 358, and 359.

Thanks for the warning, we've corrected the format.

Also, in figure 9. the equation presented from the trend line corresponds to a ratio. Why is not the other equation shown??? Whom trend is the equation??

Thanks for the note, we have attached additional equations in Figure 9. It is only a matter of pointing out that the graphical dependence will be exponential, given that it is the sum of the data for one variant (all columns of one color) 1.00 or 100%. The equations are for guidance only.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx