Eton College is one of the oldest educational establishments in the UK and dates back to 1440 when it was founded by King Henry VI. Famous for educating many members of the Royal Family, it is now a secondary boarding school for approximately 1,280 boys between the ages of 13 and 18.

One of Eton College's stated aims is "to provide a varied programme of cultural, artistic and leisure activities that will promote the skills and confidence of individual boys, enrich the life of the School and create interests for life". The college's provision for the support of creative activities makes a key contribution to this aim and a major investment was recently made in its art department to modernize and improve facilities.

The department features a pottery and sculpture studio that is on the ground floor of a two storey building with the IT suite above. The studio is a deep room, which, while adequately lit by windows at the edges, would have needed electric lights switched on all the time to provide sufficient light for the students to work. Not only would this be a waste of energy, but natural light would be much better for artistic applications because it gives truer colour rendition for materials, paints and pigments.

Assisted by professional builders and architects, the college considered the measures that could be taken to overcome these issues. In addition, they looked at lighting solutions for the first floor IT suite that was also dark away from the windows. While traditional rooflights were an option in the IT suite, it was felt that heat caused by the sun coming through them may be oppressive in summer. Of course, for the ground floor studio, rooflights were not an alternative.

The architect recommended installing Solatube Daylight Systems in both the 150m² art studio and the smaller computer room.

Bob Catchpole who teaches in the studio comments:

"For artistic applications, the type and quality of light is vital. The Solatube tubular skylights produce a very nice, soft daylight that brings out the true colours of the students' work. They also bring a plentiful supply of light into the studio even during the Autumn and Winter months."

"Having the Solatube tubular skylights in the studio complements the primary light source from the daylight colour balanced electric lights. In addition when the room is not being used for teaching, they provide light for cleaning and maintenance of the room during the day."

The Solatube daylight systems that have been installed in the IT suite also work extremely well to provide high quality, natural light. And they do this without causing any issues of computer screen glare and without problems from heat loss or gain that could have been a problem if traditional skylights had been used.

Solatube Products used: Solatube 290DS in the IT Suite and Solatube 21-C with patented round-to-square transition box to fit existing 600 x 600mm ceiling grid.

Words and images reproduced with kind permission of Eton College