Mahsa Ghofrani - Student of Architectural Technology, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran
Parisa Sadeghi - Master Student of Architectural Technology, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran
Niloofar Samadi - Master Student of Architectural Technology, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran
Yaser Shahbazi - Associate Professor of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran
Farhad Ahmadnejad - Assistant Professor of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran

Since the building sector has the highest energy consumption, there is a need to use methods of reducing energy usage in buildings. In traditional Iranian architecture, many methods were used for this purpose, one of them was to use daylight to reduce the need for artificial lighting. The aim of this research is to investigate the lighting conditions of historical buildings, especially, the residential ones in Iran. For this purpose, ۴ historical houses in the same district of Tabriz city related to the Qajar era were selected and simulated using VELUX Daylight Visualizer and HoneyBee software. Secondly, the analyses were conducted and the results have been compared with daylighting standards. The final result of the comparison was that just ۳۰% of the analyzed zones obtain enough daylight levels and don’t require artificial lighting which indicates that the performance of these houses is not acceptable. According to ۳D models of these houses, it can be concluded that small windows are the main reason for low daylight levels in these buildings

Daylight Simulation, Iranian Historical Houses, VELUX, Honeybee