Florida Energy Code: Lighting

Every commercial lighting package in Florida has to clear the energy code before it clears anything else. It is the requirement most often discovered late, because the fixtures can be perfect, the wattage can be well inside the budget, and the job can still fail on a control that nobody put on the drawings.

This page covers what the code asks for, which parts are negotiable and which are not, and the one question we get asked more than any other: whether replacing lighting in an existing building triggers the whole thing.

Which code, which edition

• The Florida Building Code, Energy Conservation, 8th Edition (2023) is what is in force today. It took effect 31 December 2023 and applies to permit applications from 1 January 2024.
• Florida writes its own energy volume. It is not a straight adoption of the International Energy Conservation Code. The 8th Edition was built from Florida's own 2020 volume with Commission-approved changes drawn from the 2021 IECC. The practical consequence: Florida section numbers do not always match IECC section numbers, so a reference lifted from a national guide can point at the wrong place.
• ASHRAE 90.1-2019 is available as an alternate path, and Florida excludes three of its sections. See our ASHRAE 90.1 page for why that exclusion is worth knowing.
• The 9th Edition is coming. It is scheduled to take effect 31 December 2026. If your project straddles that date, ask the building department which edition it will be reviewed under before you finalise the schedule.

The three ways to comply

You pick one route and stay in it. You cannot take the lighting power allowance from one and the control rules from another.

• Prescriptive. Keep installed interior lighting power inside the Chapter 4 allowance, keep exterior power inside its allowance, install every mandatory control, and satisfy one additional efficiency option from C406. Two of those options are lighting-based: reducing interior lighting power to 90 percent of the allowance, or installing enhanced digital lighting controls.
• ASHRAE 90.1-2019. Comply with the whole standard instead of Chapter 4. Florida's own compliance form carries a checkbox for it.
• Performance, or whole-building modeling. Model the building against a reference design. This is the route that lets you buy lighting power back with envelope or mechanical performance. Florida lists approved software for it.

Lighting power density, and an honest note about the numbers

Lighting power density is the watts per square foot your design is allowed. There are two prescriptive methods. The Building Area Method gives one figure for the whole building type against gross lit area, which is fast and useful for budgeting. The Space-by-Space Method gives a figure per space type, summed across the building, and it permits additional allowances for things like decorative and retail display lighting that the Building Area Method does not. On retail and hospitality work, space-by-space almost always yields a bigger budget and is worth the extra effort.

We are not going to print Florida's watts-per-square-foot figures on this page. The code text sits behind a paywall, and publishing numbers we have not read from the code itself is how bad information spreads. Get them from the code, from your engineer, or from the compliance software. What we can tell you accurately is the direction of travel, because ASHRAE publishes it themselves.

• The allowances have been tightening hard. Across ASHRAE 90.1 editions from 2016 to 2022, published space-by-space values fell roughly 22 percent for an enclosed office, 31 percent for open-plan office, 33 percent for a corridor and 18 percent for a conference room.
• Retail additional allowances were cut sharply in 90.1-2022, with the two highest retail display categories dropping by a third or more. If you are working from a retail lighting approach that was comfortable a few years ago, it may not be now.
• Florida's 8th Edition reduced interior allowances across most categories in both tables. Exterior allowances were left alone in this edition.
• The next cycle tightens exterior. Analysis prepared for the Florida Building Commission on the 2024 IECC shows exterior base site allowances falling substantially, which is a reason to watch the 9th Edition if you do a lot of site lighting.

The mandatory controls, by the space they apply to

This is the part that fails jobs. The requirements below apply regardless of compliance path.

• Automatic shutoff. Lighting off within 20 minutes of the last occupant leaving.
• Manual off. Occupant-sensed spaces still need a way for a person to switch the lights off.
• Manual on, or partial automatic on to no more than 50 percent power. Full automatic on is permitted only in a defined list of spaces: corridors, stairways, interior parking, lobbies, locker rooms, library stacks, restrooms, and anywhere manual-on would be a safety or security problem.
• Occupancy sensing is required in classrooms and lecture and training rooms, conference and meeting rooms, copy and print rooms, lounges and break rooms, enclosed offices, open-plan offices, restrooms, storage rooms, locker rooms, warehouses, corridors, and spaces of 300 square feet or less.
• Open-plan offices. Control zones no larger than 600 square feet. Unoccupied zones automatically on to no more than 20 percent. Zone power reduced to 20 percent or less within 20 minutes of that zone emptying, and everything off within 20 minutes of the whole office emptying.
• Corridors. Uniform reduction within 20 minutes of vacancy, with an exception where the corridor is below two footcandles at its darkest point with everything on. Corridor occupant sensing is one of the newer requirements and it is a common miss on multifamily and hospitality work.
• Warehouse aisles. Automatic reduction of at least 50 percent within 20 minutes, each aisle controlled independently, and the control must not reach beyond its own aisle.
• Daylight-responsive control in primary sidelit and toplit zones, dimming continuously and able to go to off, with a trigger at more than 150 watts of lighting power in the primary daylight area. There is a long list of exceptions worth reading: direct patient care areas, ground-floor retail sidelit zones, small fenestration, blocked daylight, low visible transmittance, deep overhangs, and where lighting power has been reduced instead.
• Light reduction control. A manual control that dims or steps the lighting in addition to full on and off. Acceptable approaches include continuous dimming to 20 percent or less of full power, or reducing or alternating luminaires to land between 30 and 70 percent. Exempt where there is a single luminaire under 60 watts or the space is under 0.45 watts per square foot, in daylight-responsive zones, and in corridors, lobbies and electrical and mechanical rooms.
• Time-switch controls where occupancy sensing is not used, with manual override limited to two hours over a control area of no more than 5,000 square feet. Larger override areas and longer overrides are permitted in mall concourses, auditoriums, sales areas, manufacturing and sports arenas with a captive key switch.
• Specific application controls for display and accent lighting, display cases, under-shelf and under-cabinet, gallery and museum lighting, and supplemental task lighting: separately controlled and automatically switched off. Luminaires under this section are exempt from occupancy-sensor control.
• Sleeping units and hotel guest rooms. Permanent luminaires and switched receptacles off within 20 minutes of vacancy, with an exception where card-key control is used and for direct patient care spaces.
• Non-visual lighting such as plant growth and food warming: independently time-switched.
• Medical and dental task lighting provided in addition to general lighting needs a manual control.

Exterior and parking garages

• Exterior lighting switches off automatically when there is daylight. Façade and landscape lighting goes off between one hour after closing and one hour before opening. Everything else reduces by at least half, either from midnight to 6am, or an hour either side of business hours, or when nothing has moved for 15 minutes.
• Parking lot luminaires over 78 watts mounted at 24 feet or less must reduce power by at least half when no activity is detected for more than 15 minutes, on control zones of no more than 1,500 watts.
• Parking garages reduce power by at least 30 percent after 20 minutes of no activity, in zones no larger than 3,600 square feet, with an exception where the zone is below 1.5 footcandles at its darkest point.
• Garage daylight transition zones at covered entrances and exits reduce by at least half from sunset to sunrise, and luminaires within 20 feet of perimeter wall openings respond to daylight. Exceptions apply where the opening-to-wall ratio is under 40 percent or obstructions block the daylight.

The question we get asked most: does a retrofit trigger the code?

This one matters enormously to property managers and to anyone doing tenant work, and the answer is more generous than people fear and less generous than they hope.

Compliance is triggered when 50 percent or more of the luminaires are replaced, or 10 percent or more of the lighting system is replaced, or when the alteration increases lighting power. Any one of those is enough.

Read that carefully, because the trap is in the second and third clauses. Most people assume that because an LED retrofit reduces wattage they are safe. Wattage is only one of the three tests. And when compliance is triggered it is not just the power budget that applies — it is the entire mandatory controls package, occupancy sensing and daylight response included. That is what actually fails these jobs.

• Changing lamps only, leaving the luminaires and the connected load alone, is generally outside it.
• Replacing the luminaires through a corridor or a floor is over the threshold and brings the controls with it, including the corridor occupancy requirement.
• A tenant fit-out effectively always triggers it, because a fit-out replaces nearly all the luminaires in the demised space.
• How "space" is scoped changes the answer, and jurisdictions differ on whether it means the room or the whole tenant area. Ask the building department rather than assuming the reading that suits you.

Paperwork, testing and sign-off

• The form is Form C402-2023, titled Alterations, Renovations and Building Systems, from Appendix CA of the code. It captures space types and lighting power density, references the interior and exterior allowance tables, and carries the checkbox electing ASHRAE 90.1 compliance.
• The full compliance report and the full input report from the software both have to be attached. Reviewers do read the input report, and mis-assigned space types and inflated areas get caught there.
• Three signatures: the preparer certifies the plans comply, the owner or agent certifies the building complies, and the building official signs on review. The form locks once the owner signs, so the preparer has to sign first.
• Functional testing of lighting controls is required before final inspection, with evidence from the registered design professional or an approved agency that occupancy sensors, time switches and daylight controls have been tested, calibrated, adjusted and programmed.
• The owner gets documentation within 90 days of the certificate of occupancy certifying that the lighting controls meet the performance criteria. Somebody has to actually produce that, and on fast-moving jobs it is frequently forgotten.

Common questions

Related: ASHRAE 90.1 for lighting · LEED and lighting · WELL and lighting · Dimmers and lighting controls · Lighting controls guide