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

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 is especially helpful when manufacturers begin to phase out and discontinue certain products, causing you to have to buy replacement products from another manufacturer. That's especially useful if you have compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs, with so many manufacturers beginning to phase them out of production.

We recently wrote about incandescent bulb part numbers, discussing the difficulties that come with translating a native language into a secondary language.

Some people say that there are certain languages that are easier to translate than others, because of how they are structured.

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.

As we start a new year full of new retrofit, design, and maintenance projects, we've updated our Lighting Terms Glossary to include some important terms that you'll want to be aware of this year. 

If you outfit your buildings with fluorescent, HID, or plug-and-play linear LED lighting, you depend on a device called a ballast.

When the right ballasts are used, the end result can mean a cost-effective lighting solution that is energy efficient and gives you advanced controls over the amount of light produced in your space. Let’s dig a little deeper.

If you're not yet familiar with the NPR podcast "Planet Money," you  should really get acquainted with it soon. The show does an excellent job of breaking down complex economic topics for the ears of laymen.

Calculating energy savings and finding lighting rebates is no easy feat. You're often left searching on your own for seemingly impossible-to-find answers to your questions. Well, search no further. We've compiled a list of our top resources for energy savings and lighting rebate information.

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.

If you're new to commercial lighting, the concept of a ballast can be an odd one. When you're used to just screwing light bulbs into sockets and flipping switches, the transition to ballast-dependent lighting technology can be frustrating.

In our last lighting technology post, we discussed fluorescent technology and how they produce artificial light. After fluorescents came compact fluorescents.

At Regency, we use The Lighting Pyramid to help guide the priorities of retrofit-interested customers. The Lighting Pyramid illustrates the fact that as lighting technology advanced, wattage and lumens no longer have a direct relationship. Today, you can purchase lighting that consumes significantly less watts but produces far greater lumens –– you don't always need to consume more energy to produce greater light.