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

The impact of LED lighting on the seeming endless sea of options is greater than just a few new — significantly more efficient — options for a table lamp or track fixture. LED technology has brought plenty of new replacement products, but it has also introduced a whole new category of options: LED fixtures. 

This is a question we commonly address: “I’d like to go with LED lighting, but how do I know if I should go with a screw-in replacement product or a new LED fixture?”

Of course, whether you're switching to an LED screw-in or a brand new LED fixture, you're probably well-acquainted with the lighting technology's many advantages. One important one to highlight here: the lumen output, or brightness, doesn't depreciate with LED like it does with fluorescent or HID technology. The lumen output will remain the same over the life of the product whether you go with a replacement lamp or fixture. 

Our goal here on the Lighting Insights Blog is to offer helpful answers to common lighting questions and to keep you posted on key developments in the industry.

There are a lot of big numbers that get thrown around in lighting retrofit discussions. The savings –– from the cost of energy to the lessened maintenance workload –– can be eye-popping.

Yet, oftentimes, the only number that is really eye-popping to your boss is that of upfront cost.

The reality is, no matter how common sense a retrofit may seem, big expenditures rarely get passed swiftly. (And sometimes, the sheer size of the number on the pricetag can delay a quick-ROI, "common sense" project for years.)

If you're like so many of our lighting-savvy customers who have had trouble getting budgetary approval for an energy-saving lighting conversion, maybe one of the ideas below can help you to get something pushed through and start saving your company money with a refreshed look.

Last year, we helped the Staples Center in Los Angeles retrofit to LED lighting. Between that venue and the adjacent Microsoft Theater, the property manager retrofitted over 100 fixtures to LED, bringing the cost of energy down to 25 percent of what the venues used to pay, when they were using metal halide fixtures. Check out our case study here.

But their decision had more to do with maintenance than energy, which can be extremely difficult in hard-to-reach areas. 

That brings us to our first reason why venues like the Staples Center and the Microsoft Theater are rapidly retrofitting to LED:

Earlier this year, I was talking with a project manager for a mid-sized national restaurant chain about the challenges of getting a store properly lit (and properly dimmed). "If I open a store a year late and a million dollars over budget, as long as it looks good, I'm not worried about losing my job. But if it's Friends and Family Night and my CEO asks me to dim the lighting and it flickers, I'm worried."

Perhaps you've been in the same shoes, and you're well acquainted with the importance and difficulty of restaurant lighting.

We've used our Lighting Insights blog to help readers understand light bulb part numbers so they can more accurately replace or retrofit their lighting. Another piece of the part number puzzle is ANSI code, which can help to pair ballasts with lamps.

What are ANSI codes?

ANSI stands for "American National Standards Institute," which is an organization that develops standards for a wide range of commercial products. In lighting, ANSI codes have particular relevance to common types of light bulbs, but they are less and less common in the modern lighting world. That said, they remain a useful piece of information for finding the right ballast for your lighting.

Do you feel like lighting is throwing a wrench in your project schedule and you’re commonly scrambling to get a lighting package value engineered? And then, after you go through V.E., are you left with a package that doesn’t meet the original design intent?

There’s another way to do lighting.

By working with a Regency lighting designer early in the design process, you can avoid the value engineering crunch altogether and still come out ahead on your budget. Even more, you can be confident that the final product will be more consistent and on-brand across your projects.

Around this time last year, Philips Lighting and the City of Dubai jointly announced the development of "the world's most efficient light bulb," touting a new LED filament bulb that can reportedly produce up to 200 lumens per watt.

Solid State Lighting Design explained more about the lamps:

LED is an exciting technology, but completely changing the lighting in your building over to LED may not always be practical nor the best choice today. We still get a lot of questions from customers asking where in their buildings are the best places to convert to LED.

Oftentimes, the switch to energy efficient lighting takes place over a few phases. One section of the building is changed first. Then, when the energy savings from that kicks in, more money is allocated for similar projects. That's how one of our customers at a high-rise apartment building managed to retrofit every socket to top-of-the-line LED.

When you're in the business of opening beautiful places –– be they retail stores, restaurants, office buildings, or apartment complexes –– life can feel like a game of compromises.

Typically, you have four main objectives: meet building code, maintain design intent, stay within budget, and open up on time. And oftentimes, achieving all four of those things feels like a pipe dream. Just choose two or three. Something almost always has to give.

It doesn't have to be that way.