Practical advice on commercial lighting from LED retrofits to lighting design.

One of our lighting specialists was recently working with a chief engineer at a commercial office who was scrambling to get a suite ready for a new tenant. The process was pretty typical, and the tenant was putting a share of their improvement funds toward lighting upgrades.

But, as always with construction and remodeling, a problem surfaced: the lighting fixtures that the tenant's architect specified had a 6-8 week lead time, but the tenant was expecting to occupy the space in 4 weeks.

The chief engineer was caught in a pickle, and the manufacturer's rep the architect worked with on the spec had no similar alternatives to offer.

Dimming LEDs can be tricky for a variety of reasons, and it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint the source of the particular issue you're facing, like flickering. In this post, we'll zero in on one particular issue: a lack of load resistance.

Conventional (TRIAC) dimmer switches –– the ones designed to work with incandescent and halogen light bulbs –– require a certain amount of "holding current," or wattage in non-electrical-engineer terms, in order to work properly. When paired with an incandescent, the bulb draws enough voltage for the dimmer to work with and reduce. The control cuts the voltage, sending less to the lamp, or bulb, resulting in reduced light output (dimmed lighting).

Linear fluorescent lighting has for decades been the workhorse light source for so many applications, thanks to its long life ratings and relatively efficient use of energy. But the emergence of linear LED technology over the last decade or so has really changed the landscape, making buying decisions for linear applications more complex.

We get questions all the time about linear lighting. Is it risky to invest in LED lighting products? Are more fluorescent phaseouts ahead? What linear lighting products does Regency suggest?

Summer is in full swing and I'm glad, because that means baseball is in full swing. And I love baseball.

But the game of baseball is a lot like a lighting project. And I don't love lighting projects.

What gives?

Well, I should back up here. I work for a lighting company. So saying I don't love lighting projects isn't the most rah-rah thing to say. 

It takes a lot of energy to keep an apartment building running. Unlike a commercial office or most retail stores, apartment buildings are open to residents 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That's a non-stop schedule of keeping the HVAC running and lighting on.

But if you're an engineer at one of these apartment buildings, here's the good news for you: if you haven't already switched to long-life, energy-efficient lighting, you may be sitting on a gold mine of savings by simply upgrading your lighting.

Earlier this year, the Department of Energy published a report on LED failure that, among other things, found the lifetime claims for more than half of LED products to be inaccurate, or miscalculated.

Why is there so much bad information out there? Are manufacturers just fudging their claims, or are there other pieces to the puzzle?

Well, though we frequently stress the importance of vetting manufacturers, and manufacturer reps, a lot of this bad information just comes down to the industry adjusting to a new, still emerging and evolving lighting technology. That said, we're not here to make excuses for misleading or inaccurate lifetime claims. We're here to make the technicalities behind these inaccuracies understandable, so that you can effectively avoid the risk of getting left high-and-dry with early failures or poor light quality from LEDs.

As a company, Regency has always been driven by its values. We care deeply about serving customers well, valuing employees, and making an impact in the world around us. 

Alice + Olivia launched in 2002 as a women's fashion brand that was exclusively sold in Barneys New York. The company's steady growth over the last 15 years now has it selling its clothing in 50 different countries. And part of that growth has come through the brand's expansion to its own brick and mortar locations.

Alice + Olivia opened its first boutiques in New York and Los Angeles in the mid-2000s and has since gone on to open 38 worldwide.

Last year, we published our first-ever LED Buying Guide. We say over and over again around here that our goal is to make lighting easy for our customers, and the LED Buying Guide was published with that objective in mind.

The lighting world has undergone rapid changes over the last decade with the emergence and proliferation of light emitting diode (LED) lighting technology. Just seven years ago, in 2010, less than 10 manufacturers made up 90 percent of the lighting market. Last year, that market share was spread between more than 400 manufacturers, each with its own fluid, iterative product line.

That's a lot to keep up with.

So, how do we make things easier for you?

Poor Robert Kelly. He has all but lost his name. He is no longer Dr. Robert E. Kelly, political science professor at South Korea's Pusan National University and sought-after expert on South Korean politics. To most of the world, at least, Robert Kelly is now, simply, "BBC Dad."

If you haven't yet seen the video of BBC Dad's unfortunate, cringeworthy 15 seconds of fame, well, here it is.