In buildings, daylight is a commonly-used source of wellbeing, aesthetic delight and energy efficiency. Daylight is therefore one of the main parameters considered in the design of buildings. Methods used by architectural designers may be quantitative and/or qualitative. In general, these methods feature detailed figures, charts and graphs; however, there are two criticisms of how these methods handle daylighting. Firstly, a figure or a chart is only really useful for evaluating the final outcome of a design, not helping an architect in the earlier stages of the design process. Secondly, these sorts of methods are based on theoretical models in which the building's occupants and their preferences or behavioural needs are either ignored or excessively generalised. In addition to this, some architects base their daylighting designs on their own ideas that actually conflict with those of the building's intended occupants. In spite of this, various research has shown that accounting for the preferences and behaviours of occupants are major factors in the success of a building project. It is therefore very important for architects and daylighting designers to better understand these factors, and to incorporate them into the earliest stages of their designs. Occupants' preferences should be translated into terms of relationships between the components of the architectural space (e.g. envelope, window, furnishings, colours and finishes) and the specific contextual aspects of the building's usage (e.g. climatic and socio-cultural environments). More research in this area is therefore required, particular within contexts that have previously received relatively little attention, such as hot, dry regions with clear, sunny skies. To this end, a first step is to decide on the most appropriate method for evaluating daylighting quality in buildings - subjectively, from the point of view of the occupants; or objectively, using strictly physical/statistical measurements. Surveys are generally chosen for large case studies or for experimental research, but the post-occupancy evaluation (POE) appears to be the most suitable method for this particular research. This method was therefore applied in the evaluation of several aspects of a building, and has since been extended to include daylight as a parameter. The daylighting POE method was used to assess two kinds of contemporary building in southern Algeria: offices; and flats within mutli-family housing projects. This paper presents the reasoning for - and implementation of - this method
