This study aimed to analyze the lighting design in selected historical sites. Lighting plays a significant role in reflecting symbolic, functional, and aesthetic values. Our study found that there is no special recognition for mud buildings’ outdoor lighting standards, so we analyzed the lighting design in a case study approved by the Diriyah Gate Development Authority. We developed lighting criteria and tested the effect of the building surface on these criteria, to be used as a reference for lighting local mud heritage buildings. This study used a mixed methods research framework encompassing both qualitative and quantitative data. For the qualitative data, a descriptive–analytical approach was used to list all the criteria found in the literature for historical and heritage buildings, as well as site visits and observations for the selected mud building. The quantitative data contained the dimensions identified in the first phase to develop and test the preferences of lighting criteria illuminance and correlated color temperature (CCT). A computer simulation was created to derive the outdoor lighting standards, and a questionnaire was developed to assess clarity, sensitivity, and preferences. The findings revealed that participants mostly preferred higher illuminance and warm temperature was preferred over other temperature options. The manuscript concludes with some recommendations for future studies.

The building sector is both a major contributor to climate change and one of the most exposed to its impacts, and dwellings designed today will operate under mid-century climates. This study quantifies the projected impact of climate change on the climate of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and on the thermal performance and comfort of a government-approved residential villa archetype, and tests envelope improvement as an adaptation measure. Future hourly weather files for 2061–2080 were generated from a baseline IWEC typical meteorological year by morphing with change factors from the CMIP5 ensemble (IPCC Fifth Assessment Report) under RCP 4.5, at the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles of the ensemble warming distribution. Relative to the baseline, summer means rise by 2.1–4.1 °C across this range, days with maxima of 45 °C or more increase from 5 to 40–74, tropical nights above 30 °C from 25 to 72–124, and cooling degree-days by 17–35%. Under the warm-end (90th percentile) file used for the IES Virtual Environment building simulations, living-room PPD rises from about 11% to 13% with wider cooling peaks, and raising wall and roof insulation to ASHRAE 90.1-2019 levels cuts envelope conduction gains by about 6% and energy use intensity from 128.42 to 123.45 kWh/m²·year (−3.9%). The findings support tightening envelope requirements in the Saudi Building Code and integrating future weather files into design practice.

Lighting systems constitute a significant share of building energy demand while simultaneously affecting visual comfort, circadian regulation, cognitive performance, and occupant well-being. Despite rapid advances in smart building technologies and adaptive illumination systems, the literature remains fragmented regarding the integration of optimization intelligence, interoperable Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructures, and event-driven automation frameworks within unified human-centric lighting environments. This study presents a systematic bibliometric and thematic review of smart indoor lighting research published between 2015 and 2024, following the PRISMA 2020 framework across Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore. From an initial corpus of 5,529 records, 30 studies satisfied the final inclusion criteria requiring simultaneous reporting of quantitative performance outcomes alongside explicitly defined control or automation mechanisms. Bibliometric analyses using MATLAB and VOSviewer revealed strong growth in adaptive lighting and IoT-enabled infrastructures, with Annual Average Growth Rates reaching 9.2% for occupant-centred lighting, 7.3% for energy-oriented lighting, and 13.9% for sensing and communication infrastructures. However, metadata-level integration between hyper-heuristics, interoperable IoT middleware, and Event–Condition–Action (ECA) and IFTTT automation remained extremely limited, with a mean Jaccard co-occurrence coefficient of only 0.018, indicating weak cross-domain coupling. Thematic metrics show uneven adoption: Equivalent Melanopic Lux (EML) is reported in 20% of core studies, Circadian Stimulus (CS) in 27%, while Unified Glare Rating (UGR) remains under-reported at 13.3%, highlighting a methodological gap in visual comfort assessment. The findings demonstrate that smart indoor lighting research continues to evolve through disconnected disciplinary trajectories rather than cohesive intelligent control ecosystems. This review proposes a conceptual integration framework and future research roadmap aimed at supporting interoperable, energy-efficient, and human-centric lighting systems capable of simultaneously optimizing automation performance, occupant comfort, and non-visual health outcomes within intelligent indoor environments.