Discomfort glare from daylight: Influence of transmitted color and the eye's macular pigment

Designing architectural façades that allow sufficient daylight to create visually comfortable and pleasant envi- ronments is a challenging aspect of building design as it requires to account for visual comfort and discomfort glare risks, and understand the factors that influence them. Amongst the key factors that contribute to one’ s perception of discomfort glare, we find the quality and quantity of daylight transmitted through the façade on the one hand, and the characteristics of the human eye and its synergistic functioning with the brain on the other hand. In the last two decades, several prediction models have been developed to quantify discom- fort glare by considering almost exclusively the photometric properties and spatial distribution of incoming light. Although these empirical models have been derived to best match the user perception of glare, they fail to account for the significant inter-individual variability that exists in glare perception and are furthermore limited in their applicability in certain visual environments.