Five Global Regulations Shaping Ventilation and Daylight-Centric Building Design

Overview

Published on 21 February 2026 by the Australian trade title Architecture & Design, this short piece appears in the magazine's product-news stream and is built around commentary from Anders Dam Vestergaard, VELUX's executive vice president for North America, Europe and APAC. The question it sets out to answer is simple: which building regulations outside Australia are already reshaping how daylight and fresh air are delivered, and why should Australian architects, builders and skylight installers care before those ideas reach the National Construction Code (NCC)?

Key Findings

• The framing statistic is that people now spend roughly 90 percent of their time indoors, which the author ties to sealed, air-conditioned, compartmentalized interiors that trade away daylight and fresh air.
• Regulation 1, the 2024 recast of the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), tightens indoor air quality, ventilation, daylight optimization and envelope requirements and mandates zero-emission new buildings. The article suggests this could eventually push the NCC toward minimum daylighting and skylight provisions and even energy-performance passports.
• Regulation 2, the EU Taxonomy Regulation, classifies sustainable construction and sets criteria for climate mitigation, resource efficiency and low-emission materials. Australia's NABERS and Green Star tools already track similar ESG and lifecycle-carbon frameworks, so lifecycle-based rules on glazing, thermal performance and passive ventilation are expected to follow.
• Regulation 3, ASHRAE Standards 62.1 and 62.2 (2024), revises ventilation rates, tightens air-quality monitoring and raises expectations for energy-recovery systems. Because Australia leans on ASHRAE data, the author expects automated and sensor-driven skylights to gain ground as a controllable ventilation component.
• Regulation 4, the 2024 International Building Code and International Residential Code, strengthens ventilation, moisture management, air sealing and smoke control. The NCC benchmarks the IBC/IRC on wind loading, glazing safety and fire resistance, which for skylights touches thermal values, condensation behavior and overhead safety-glazing rules.
• Regulation 5, California's 2024 Title 24, is presented as one of the world's most aggressive energy codes on ventilation, filtration and daylight optimization. The shared climate concerns of California and Australia (heat, bushfire risk, rising cooling loads) are offered as the reason its provisions tend to migrate.

Why It Matters for Daylighting

Strip away the Australian framing and the article is a snapshot of a global convergence: energy codes on three continents are now treating daylight and natural ventilation as measured performance requirements rather than amenities. For U.S. readers that is old news in one respect (Title 24 and ASHRAE 90.1 have required toplighting and daylight controls in large single-story spaces for more than a decade) but useful in another, because the EPBD and EU Taxonomy signal where investor-facing sustainability reporting is heading. Owners of warehouses, distribution centers and manufacturing plants who install prismatic skylights today are, in effect, building the documentation trail that lifecycle-based rating systems will ask for.

Two points deserve a skeptical eye. The article is manufacturer-sourced commentary, so its emphasis on operable, sensor-driven skylights reflects VELUX's product line, and its NCC predictions are speculation rather than announced rulemaking. The regulatory summaries themselves are accurate at a headline level but very brief; anyone specifying to Title 24 or ASHRAE 62.1 should go to the code text, not this piece.

About the Source

Architecture & Design is a long-running Australian architecture and building-products publication (print and online) whose product-news section carries supplier-contributed editorial. This article is attributed to the Architecture & Design team, quotes VELUX's Anders Dam Vestergaard, and runs about five minutes' reading; the library copy is an eight-page browser printout, of which three pages are full-bleed photographs and one is footnotes and a VELUX listing. The original is online at Architecture & Design.