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

When big shopping holidays like Black Friday and back-to-school shopping hit the retail world, it all too often means stores everywhere are scrambling to get the lighting right. 

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?

Lighting is one of those things that can be easily taken for granted. It’s sort of like cell phone service or drinking water –– it’s not something most people pay attention to unless it’s off.

Just like cellular networks and purified drinking water, details matter in lighting. Ensuring a cell signal isn’t spotty or that the total dissolved soluble content of water is palatable is a science. And it’s pretty easy to mess up.

With lighting, mistakes rarely go unnoticed. And even the less-noticed ones can have a trickle-down effect on sales.

The job of the lighting designer is to help you avoid such oversights, ensuring your lighting is sharp, consistent, and right for your brand.

In that spirit, here are the most common mistakes our team sees in retail lighting design:

Interest in low voltage, or 12v, lighting has grown in our increasingly energy-conscious customers over the last several years, with the emergence and proliferation of long-life, energy-efficient lighting. 

But to properly understand the full benefits of low voltage lighting, we should start here: low voltage lighting is more of a tactical application than a budgetary or energy-saving one, though there may be moderate gains in these areas in certain instances.

If you're responsible for determining the right ambiance and light quality of your application, then you probably already know how important understanding Color Rendering Index (CRI) and Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) is.

Here's the problem: CRI and CCT are anything but easy to understand.

Color Rendering Index is calculated based on how well a light source renders eight specific pastel colors. The theory is if it light renders these colors well, it should render all colors well. CRI is a simple and helpful lighting spec to predict how good the visual output of a lighting product will be.

Correlated Color Temperature (CCT or just color temperature) gauges how yellow or blue light appears. It’s measured in Kelvin and usually falls in a range between 2200 and 6500 Kelvin degrees. Warm light sources have low color temperatures (2200-3000K), featuring red, orange, and yellow colors. Cool light sources have high color temperatures (>4000K) and feature blue light.

Properly aimed lighting is one of the most important, yet easily overlooked aspects of great retail design. Done correctly, it will accent the merchandise you want to sell and lead your customers through your store. Check out this step-by-step guide on aiming to make your store attractive to customers.

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?

About a year ago, I was on a Costco run, but was turned away when I arrived. It was the middle of the day and the whole store was shut down.

Care to guess why?

Unexpected lighting maintenance expenses can make it hard to know how to budget for facilities and even harder to keep that budget.

If this sounds like something you encounter year-after-year –– or, perhaps, every other year –– figuring out how to tame those unexpected expenses can be a burden. But don't fear, there are solutions out there.

Here are four ways to reduce your unexpected lighting maintenance issues: