Fenestration Design Model for Daylight Optimization in Patient Rooms in Erbil City

Hospital design greatly influences patient recovery. Evidence indicates that daylight enhances recovery, but hospital designs in Erbil need further optimization of window configurations to provide sufficient daylight. This suboptimal design can result in longer patient stays, negatively affecting recovery outcomes. The study aims to develop a localized daylight optimization model for inpatient hospital rooms in Erbil via integrating window size, shape, and orientation to enhance patient well-being and recovery. This is accomplished through a mixed-method approach: qualitatively, a hypothetical case study has been analyzed using drawings in Revit, and quantitatively, daylighting analysis is conducted using IES-VE 2024 software for a hypothetical inpatient room case study. Results show that orientation has the most significant impact on daylight parameters. Regarding window size and aspect ratio, horizontal window ratios significantly exceeded vertical ratios (p = 0.001), emphasizing the importance of aspect ratio in optimizing daylight distribution. However, window placement did not have a statistically significant effect on illuminance levels (p = 0.182). The study concludes that window orientation and size substantially influence daylighting in hospital patient rooms. It also evaluates alternative configurations—including variations in window size, proportion, orientation, and placement—to explore potential daylighting improvements achievable in similar urban and climatic environments.