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

There's a long and heated debate about the use of incandescent light bulbs. We've debunked the myth that incandescent bulbs were banned in the US, but the reality is that efficiency standards have changed the way consumers shop for lighting. 

And with changing efficiency standards come changes in product availability. 

Regardless of your stance on the political side of this issue, we still need light in our homes, offices, schools, gyms, airports –– you get the idea. So, we get regular questions about where to buy incandescent light bulbs or what the best options are for converting to LED. 

We're interested in making lighting easy for our customers, so we've put together a list of the most common places you might find an incandescent bulb along with links for where you can buy either the incandescent product or a compatible LED upgrade. 

With the number of LED options available today, you may feel stuck by indecision when it comes to updating the lighting for your facility. With the advancement of technology, the decision making process has become much more complicated. Color temperature. Color Rendering Index. Lumen output. And the list goes on and on. 

Here are three basic tips to follow when it comes to retrofitting your lighting.

When you’re ready to make the leap to LED lighting, it can be a little scary. There are a number of different terms and performance metrics that can make a simple thing feel hard. 

Let me help you sort through a few of the most common specs, and offer you an easy way out!

Check out Regency's online Lighting Glossary for a more extensive list of lighting terms. 

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. 

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 price tag 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:

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.

About 18 months ago, we announced that we would be building an orphanage in Haiti, in order to help and care for as many as 100 orphaned children in the Caribbean country. Today, there are over 80 children who call the orphanage home, but there is more work to be done.

Part of our original vision for this project was to include a "vocational training center," where the children could learn vital, tangible skills that easily translate to in-demand jobs on the island. We have begun construction on this part of the property, and on several classrooms. And now, we're looking to accelerate construction efforts by raising funds through a special, limited time partnership with our recycling vendor.

This is the second post in our series on choosing the right color characteristics for your lighting project. Last time we addressed color temperature, but maybe the most critical issue — which has surfaced with the popularity of LED lighting — is color consistency. How do you know that the color of your lighting will be consistent from one product to another? Let’s dive in.