Photoluminescent Exit Signs

Written by Claude Haiku 4.5 from the extracted text on 28 Feb 2026. It can miss or misread redacted and scanned pages. Check the source before relying on it.

This Treasury FOI release contains a proposal from the Lighting Council Australia to modify the National Construction Code Volume 1 (section E4D8) regarding photoluminescent exit signs. The proposal seeks to remove Specification 25, which currently allows photoluminescent exit signs to operate at 30 millicandela per m² (mcd/m²)—less than 1/250th the brightness of electrically powered signs. The proposer argues photoluminescent signs are dangerously inadequate for emergency egress, citing research establishing that safe evacuation requires exit sign luminance between 8–15 candela per m² (cd/m²). The submission claims that since 2014, this equivalence has created a building safety risk, with stakeholders concerned about potential catastrophic events during evacuations when occupants cannot safely locate exits. The document presents the safety problem and supporting luminance research but does not include Treasury's own