The benefits of green buildings are endless, with the drive for this ranging from industry requirements and marketing to a genuine desire to offer increased availability of green building products. Find out how to improve your green building standards with these top tips from our leading and expert industry professionals.

Understanding LEED requirements

Although your green certificate might last the lifetime of your building, the building’s performance might not - if it isn’t kept up-to-date with new and more efficient practices that correlates with correct standards of certificate.

With the global green building industry doubling every three years and market share of green building construction activities at 24 percent globally, and 60 percent in some countries, demand for these structures will continue to grow. Building or retrofitting to a standard such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) typically leads to healthier and improved employee productivity and energy and resource-efficient buildings.

Industry leaders across the globe have made LEED the most widely used green building rating system in the world, with 2.2 million square feet of construction space certified every day.

There are four levels of certification that a building can aim for, based on a point system. This includes certified, silver, gold and platinum.In order to get certified, new buildings or retrofitted existing buildings must meet strict requirements in site planning, water efficiency, energy use, material selection, indoor air quality and design features.

Key to achieving a LEED certification is understanding which credits to choose, and finding eligible products to meet these requirements. Alongside LEED, BREEAM is the world’s leading assessment method for master planning green building standard projects, infrastructure and buildings. It recognises and reflects the value in higher performing assets across the built environment lifecycle, from new construction to in-use and refurbishment.

Paints and coatings are essential to successful green building design

Why not consider your building’s green listing from the initial blue prints? Incorporating green building standards into site plans and specifics including paints and coatings.

Jotun has developed a suite of green building paint and coating solutions, incorporating its impressive set of hand-picked low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) products for architectural powder coatings, anti-carbonation coatings for concrete, decorative paints, floor coatings, intumescent coatings for cellulosic fire protections and protective coatings focused on LEED and BREEAM standards. 

Green Building Solutions can contribute to LEED and BREEAM points, they can help achieve up to 20 % of the required LEED points needed for a building to be certified. Jotun’s GBS is the market’s easiest way to design, specify, beautify and protect buildings.