Daylighting provision gives a significant contribution to the enhancement of the indoor visual environment and user comfort. It has the potential to maintain the required illuminance level and to improve the space visual quality. This study aims to provide a parametric design approach to optimize the daylighting performance in buildings. It utilizes simulation techniques for identifying the most efficient daylight performance by incorporating parametric optimization tools in the preliminary design phase that has the potential to enhance the building daylighting performance and consequently improve the occupants’ visual comfort as well as reduce the energy consumed for electric lighting. The proposed approach is examined over a case study office building on the 90th commercial street in New Cairo, Cairo, Egypt. Analysis was conducted using the Daylight Performance Metrics (DPMs) specifically Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA). The approach redesigns an existing building while following the main design concept according to environmental and site constrains to eventually compare the daylighting performance of the resulting alternative with the original building. The results demonstrate that using the proposed optimization strategy produced a configuration that achieved Spatial Daylighting Autonomy of 87% which is 60% higher compared to the original building. The goal of this research is to increase the utilization of the early stage design decisions by developing a simulation-based approach that enables designers to examine and optimize each design decision and the potentials of environmental strategies (e.g. building geometry, window-wall ratio, shading devices, etc.) using validated lighting simulation tools.