Shedding Light on Daylighting: A Comparison of LEED, WELL, Fitwel, LBC, and Green Globes Credits

By Shruti Narkar and Kristin Hernandez

This post was originally shared in November 2020. It was updated August 2025.

Introduction

The positive effects of daylight on human health & wellbeing have been studied for many years, and the results of these studies have been well-integrated into green-building & wellness-centered rating systems.

This article will analyze daylight credits across four rating systems: LEED, WELL, Fitwel, the Living Building Challenge, and GBI’s Green Globes, to understand their unique intent and documentation requirements. Understanding the nuances, synergies, and interconnections within these rating systems can help us in designing better strategies for successful green buildings. It will also enable us to see the possibilities and likely outcomes of combining different rating systems to improve occupant health and maximize building performance.

We created a table listing the four rating systems and discovered the following similarities & differences.

Click to enlarge.

Intent

All five rating systems highlight the importance of daylight and its impact on occupant health. LEED, in particular, goes a step further by also recognizing daylighting’s role in reducing overall building energy consumption. The latest LEED v5 improves on LEED v4.1 by shifting focus from daylight as an energy-saving measure to a more human-centric approach, prioritizing spaces that foster emotional connection, satisfaction, and long-term engagement with the built environment.

Requirements

LEED, WELL, and Fitwel rely on simulated daylight analysis and on-site measurements to evaluate daylight quality and access. In contrast, the Living Building Challenge and Green Globes assess daylight based on the percentage of regularly occupied floor area with daylight availability, using more simplified estimation methods rather than climate-based annual simulations.

Green Globes, specifically, requires projects to determine the percentage of regularly occupied floor area using a Daylight Factor (DF) approach based on the percentage of glass to floor area. This keeps documentation straightforward while confirming that regularly occupied spaces not only have access to natural daylight, but that the daylight level is sufficient to support visual tasks, comfort, and the intended benefits.

Fitwel adds an additional component, requiring teams to (1) provide educational materials specifying strategies to maximize access to daylight to all building occupants and (2) share the educational materials specifying the health benefits of access to daylight with all building(s) occupants.

Alternative Compliance

Both LEED and WELL have an option to demonstrate compliance using either daylight modeling to simulate Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA) or through illuminance calculations. Fitwel v3 also offers a natural daylight calculation to determine the percentage of access to daylight across all regularly occupied spaces. The criteria for the LEED daylight credit align with WELL and Fitwel, with a range of options available for alternative compliance.

Green Globes, by contrast, doesn’t have a separate “alternative compliance” track; instead, it combines daylight and quality views into a single section and awards additional points for shading, for providing clear views to the exterior or atria, and for daylight-responsive controls. This structure creates multiple avenues to earn credit beyond the percentage of floor area with access to daylight.

Conclusion

While LEED v4.1 primarily emphasized reduced energy consumption as a key benefit of natural daylight, LEED v5 marks a significant shift toward a more human-centered approach. The former standalone Daylight credit is now embedded within the broader Occupant Experience credit, allowing projects to earn points across multiple dimensions of wellness, including biophilic design, thermal comfort, and more.

WELL places circadian health at the forefront, focusing on vertical light exposure to support sleep, productivity, and mental well-being. It stands out for its scientific grounding in how light affects human biology.

Fitwel takes a policy-driven approach, requiring not only performance calculations but also educational outreach on the strategies and benefits of daylighting. Its flexibility makes it accessible to both new and existing buildings, with an emphasis on equitable wellness for all occupants.

The Living Building Challenge prioritizes overall indoor environmental quality rather than performance metrics alone, unlike the other rating systems. It requires daylight and views in 95% of regularly occupied spaces, emphasizing equitable access and experiential quality. Daylighting is integrated into a broader strategy that also includes natural ventilation, operable windows, and user control over comfort, reinforcing a holistic approach to occupant well-being.

Lastly, Green Globes rounds out the set with a framework that rewards daylight, views, and controls such as shading and photosensor based dimming. It streamlines documentation through a simplified DF calculation and by combining daylight and views into a single pathway. Green Globes favors rigor without rigidity, offering flexibility so teams can choose methods that fit the project’s type, site, and budget without penalizing constraints outside their control.

Although each rating system brings a distinct lens, whether technical performance, circadian alignment, policy and education, or holistic environmental quality, they all share a common goal: to enhance human health and environmental responsibility through thoughtful daylight design. As these frameworks continue to evolve, their growing alignment offers project teams opportunities to integrate multiple systems and create spaces that are not only high-performing but also deeply human-centered.

Download the complete chart here.

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