Although LED lighting is the most popular and one of the most efficient lighting options right now, our team still faces a lot of questions on fluorescent lighting. Aletheia Cyr, our training and development specialist, helps walk through some of the most common questions we receive on fluorescent lighting.
Practical advice on commercial lighting from LED retrofits to lighting design.
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Aletheia Cyr
Recent Posts
Answering your fluorescent lighting questions [Ask the expert series]
Topics: LED, Ballasts, Fluorescent Lighting, Part Numbers, CFLs
We teach HID part numbers on Fridays in our School of Lighting program, and that's fitting because they're pretty easy, relative to fluorescents and incandescents.
After new employees spend hours trying to memorize chart after chart for incandescent and fluorescent part numbers, HIDs feel like a gift.
And if you've been tracking with our part numbers series so far, you might feel the same way, now that we've arrived at HIDs.
Topics: Lighting 101, HID Lighting
How to read a light bulb part number: compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs)
Lighting manufacturers speak different dialects of the same language: part numbers. The point of our part number series is to help you to better understand what all of those characters on your light bulb mean, so you can accurately and easily order replacement products.
Understanding part numbers
Topics: Lighting 101, Fluorescent Lighting, CFLs
How to read a light bulb part number: incandescent lamps
Growing up in Japan, I learned quite a bit about the challenges that come with learning a second language. I remember having both English-speaking and Japanese-speaking friends and being the translator between the two groups. And I had to work hard to make sure information didn't get lost in translation.
Oftentimes, there were tricky moments for me, as the translator. Like, when my English-speaking friends would tell a joke while smiling, that smile was perceived as nervousness by my Japanese friends. The cultures were so different, each having so many nuances, that most communications had challenges like that. I was constantly trying to figure out how to accurately capture the intent, the context, and proper body language from the native culture and properly translate it for the other culture.
Topics: Lighting 101, Wattage, Incandescent Lighting, Part Numbers
How lighting subconsciously affects your customers
About a year ago, I was on a Costco
Care to guess why?
Topics: Lighting Design, Restaurants, Movie Theaters, Retail, Hotels, Hospitality
What is HID lighting? Is it right for your application?
When I first started working at Regency, I knew little about lighting. I knew what an incandescent light bulb was and who Thomas Edison was. I knew that the lighting that came in tubes was fluorescent. And I knew that LEDs were becoming a thing. Beyond that, pretty much nada.
So needless to say, when I was in lighting training and first heard about high intensity discharge (HID) lighting technology, I had no real framework for what that was or where it was used. It just sounded foreign. And, well, intense.
Topics: Lighting 101, HID Lighting, Lighting Technology
Compact fluorescent lamps (CFL bulbs) first emerged on the lighting market as a more energy-efficient alternative to the incandescent light bulb.
Manufacturers had already started producing linear fluorescents, but the linear tubes did not fit into the same socket as incandescent light bulbs.
Topics: Lighting 101, Lighting Technology, Fluorescent Lighting, CFLs
What is halogen and how is it different than incandescent?
You may have heard about the light bulbs that are too hot to handle. Or perhaps you have heard them referred to as the lamps that have a bulb within bulb – similar to a dream within a dream, huh?
These are called halogens.
How do halogen lamps emit artificial light? Where should you use halogen lamps? Where does halogen fit into the lighting industry?
Let’s answer those questions and dive into the pros and cons of halogen technology.
Topics: Lighting 101, Halogen Lighting, Incandescent Lighting
What is an incandescent light bulb and how does it work?
Think about the last time you were at a store buying a microwave or some other appliance, like a refrigerator or a dryer. The sales associate probably rattled off a bunch of the product’s features. They probably demonstrated what it could do, talked about pricing and upgrades, and leaned on their usual talking points.
Our technologically advanced day and age has filled our lives with a bunch of equipment with functionality that most of us probably couldn’t begin to explain in any kind of detail. Sure, we can thumb around on our iPhone’s apps and show our grandmothers how Instagram and FaceTime work, but could we ever explain the device’s technological makeup?
Topics: LED, Lighting 101, Incandescent Lighting, Multifamily
LED gets a lot of airtime. That tends to happen when newer technology is making a splash on the open market.
Here, on the Lighting Insights blog, Regency authors have included “LED” in the headline of an article nearly 25 times to date and the acronym is included in almost every post.
But for all of the talk the technology gets – both here and elsewhere – how many people really know what LED is or how it works? What is LED?
For starters, LED stands for "light emitting diode."
Topics: LED, Lighting 101, Color Temperature, Incandescent Lighting