Abstract: With the increases in our requirements for the quality of the indoor lighting environment, the research in the field of indoor lighting in global architecture is progressing and developing. By using CITESPACE, analyses 733 articles of SCI journals on indoor lighting (from 1998 to 2018), including volume analysis, national or regional evolution analysis, distribution analysis of research institutions, citation journals analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, etc. The results show that indoor lighting research has experienced three stages: the starting stage in 1998, the fast and stable development stage and the regression development stage; there are many research institutions in Asia, Europe and North America, and their achievements have great influence; journals such as Energy and Buildings, Build and Environment and Solar Energy have been cited more frequently and have more academic authority; there are strong correlations among research topics, and the research framework is relatively complete; The theory of energy conservation has been held all through the researches, emphasizing the concept of sustainable development; functional lighting gradually turns to the field of behavioral and health lighting; genetic algorithms combined with new lighting research methods has become a research hotspot at the current stage.

Key words: interior lighting, research hotspots, CITESPACE, architecture