§560 — Emergency & Escape Route Lighting

Emergency lighting ensures a building can be evacuated safely if the normal power supply fails. For commercial premises and other non-residential buildings this is not an optional extra but a standardised requirement, with concrete minimum values for illuminance and activation time.

Minimum illuminance: NEN-EN 1838:2025

Since the revision NEN-EN 1838:2025 (in force since late 2024/early 2025, with immediate withdrawal of the old version) tightened core requirements apply to escape route lighting:

• Escape route: at least 1 lux over the full width of the path — no longer only on the centre line of the path, as sufficed under the previous version (NEN-EN 1838:2013). On escape routes wider than 2 metres, a border strip of at most 0.5 metres on either side may have a lower intensity.
• Anti-panic lighting (open areas where people may gather): at least 0.5 lux at floor level.

Note: a design that still relies on the old centre-line-only 1 lux requirement (NEN-EN 1838:2013) no longer complies with the current standard — for an ongoing or older project, explicitly check which version the design was based on.

Activation time

If the normal power supply fails, the emergency lighting must respond quickly:

• Within 5 seconds, at least 50% of the required illuminance level must be available.
• Within 60 seconds, the full required illuminance must be reached.

The commonly applied minimum operating duration of escape route lighting is 1 hour, sufficient to evacuate a building in an orderly manner.

Two system types

• Maintained emergency lighting — the luminaires are lit continuously, including during normal operation, and do not switch on separately in the event of a fault.
• Non-maintained emergency lighting — the luminaires are normally off and switch on automatically only when the mains supply fails.

The choice between the two depends on how the space is used — maintained systems are often applied where the regular lighting can already be switched off (for example an unmanned section of a warehouse), while non-maintained systems are more common in spaces with continuous regular lighting.

Escape route pictograms: NEN 6088 replaced by NEN-EN-ISO 7010

The green-and-white "running man" pictograms for escape routes have traditionally been laid down in the Netherlands in NEN 6088, with a minimum mounting height of generally 2 metres. However, that standard was already withdrawn in 2013 (phased out by 2016) due to a conflict with the international symbol set NEN-EN-ISO 7010; the replacement standard NEN 3011:2015 now references NEN-EN-ISO 7010 as the applicable set of pictograms. In practice, the transition is therefore already complete, not ongoing.

Note: an installation that is still fitted exclusively with the (by now withdrawn) NEN 6088 pictogram no longer complies with current standardisation — for a specific project, always check against the current NEN 3011/NEN-EN-ISO 7010 publication status.

Common mistakes

1. Treating emergency lighting purely as a fire-safety matter, separate from NEN 1010 — the electrotechnical installation requirements (wiring, power supply, switching) do fall within the scope of NEN 1010, alongside the specific photometric requirements of NEN-EN 1838.
2. Lighting only the escape route and forgetting anti-panic lighting — in larger open areas (for example a canteen or production hall) the 0.5 lux requirement for anti-panic lighting is a separate requirement, not automatically covered by escape route lighting alone.
3. Assuming a slower activation time is acceptable — the 5-second/50% requirement and the 60-second/100% requirement are concrete design requirements for the emergency lighting system to be selected, not an indicative guideline.
4. Still designing on the basis of the old centre-line-only 1 lux requirement (NEN-EN 1838:2013) or the withdrawn NEN 6088 pictogram — both are no longer valid since, respectively, the revision and the withdrawal; a design relying on either may already be outdated by the time it is delivered.

Related

• Lighting Installations — §559
• Periodic inspection according to NEN 3140
• Residual Current Circuit Breakers (RCD)