Megaman’s latest innovation is a brand new LED technology called Perfect White, so called because it enhances textiles, bringing the whites to life and accentuating colours. Offering superb efficacy and high energy efficiency, Perfect White is ideal for all applications but really shines in retail facilities. The range includes Megaman Vito LED downlight, Carlo LED downlight, Modena LED Tracklight and AR111 reflectors, all designed to produce a vibrant light that accentuates white objects, making them appear even whiter and brighter.
Many textiles found in retail stores contain Fluorescent Whitening Agents (FWAs) which, when excited, fluoresce – giving the object a brighter and livelier appearance. This is why clothes often look better when shown in natural daylight. Megaman‘s Perfect White is different and the magic is done at chip level with a special phosphor coating which introduces violet light with a peak at 410nm in the near visible, non-harmful part of spectrum – also found in natural sunlight – to provide an output that closely mimics the effect of natural daylight on white objects.
Additionally, the violet element within Megaman’s Perfect White technology, leaves the rest of the spectrum unchanged – so other colours maintain their vibrancy too. The violet just excites the FWAs, producing a ‘Perfect’ white finish that not only makes the product leap out from any background but increases contrast.
Megaman’s Perfect White is ideally suited to retail applications as it exceeds retailer’s stringent requirements for high performance light sources that highlight merchandise, particularly fabrics. Perfect White technology has been developed to deliver the perfect light that not only makes white fabrics stand out but also renders the true colours of other hues. Retail outlets, fashion stores in particular, will find that merchandise is more attractive to customers when exposed to Perfect White’s light.
Trinity shopping centre in Leeds, with lighting designed by BDP – the more efficient the lighting, the more valuable the shopping centre
Lux Reports: The latest report from UK shopping centres body BCSC and property advisor CBRE has added weight to the argument that LED lighting has become crucial to energy efficiency improvements and the valuation of malls.
Making malls energy efficient adds five per cent to their value“
British Council of Shopping Centres
The report on the environment and rationale for sustainability has taken a deliberately financial stance on enhancing the value of shopping centres and estimated that making malls energy efficient adds five per cent to their value.
BCSC president and chief executive of UK property investor Hammerson, David Atkins, said: ‘In the past reports have tended to be either very theoretical or very technical. This is one of the first attempts to present the arguments in a straightforward and logical way to those who may be making or advising on sustainability strategies and to put numbers on the topic.’
He added: ‘There is no doubt that the potential upside of investment per pound is highest among those schemes which may have adopted more of a “sticking plaster” approach to maintenance and replacing equipment in the past.’
Rebecca Pearce, EMEA head of sustainability at CBRE, who authored the report, said it is an attempt to persuade sceptics and, analysing 35 centres across the spectrum of malls, the report has sought to provide evidence that it is something any landlord can achieve.
The single most positive thing that could be done to improve energy efficiency in shopping centres is undoubtedly the installation of LED lighting”
Heino Vink, Multi Corporation
‘The crux of the report is to show that sustainability is worth investing in,’ she said. ‘The most obvious is replacing existing lighting with LED lighting and really we are beyond the time to justify this and to the point of saying ‘just get on and do this guys’.’
Heino Vink, COO of Dutch-based shopping centre giant Multi Corporation, has also backed LED lighting replacement and, speaking at an International Council of Shopping Centres event in London last month, said: ‘Looking at the single most positive thing that could be done to improve energy efficiency in shopping centres, it is undoubtedly the installation of LED lighting.’
Davinder Jhamat, head of research and education at BCSC, said that the breadth of shopping centres reviewed showed that the biggest gains may be in those older, secondary schemes which lacked investment during the austerity years. ‘The case for LED lighting is very well proven. How difficult is it, after all, to change a light bulb? We’re not talking about the lifts or major HVAC changes. But this is also not just about the corporate level, it needs to be embedded.’
LUX Reports: Department store chain John Lewis is on its way to installing more than 100,000 LED lights across its estate.
After working with LEDs for four years, the retailer says it has moved from looking at the cost savings of LED to the other benefits, such as quality of light.
It will now use LEDs for all new stores, and gradually replace traditional lighting in existing buildings. By the end of this year it expects to have installed 110,000 LED fittings, using Philips light sources, and by GE – in its John Lewis and Waitrose stores.
We’ve reached a place where LED outperforms traditional lighting at every level, so it’s about what’s next”
Tony Jacob, John Lewis
‘At first it was about ensuring that LED could perform to the same level as traditional lighting,’ said Tony Jacob, head of construction, engineering and environment for John Lewis . ‘But now we’ve reached a place where LED outperforms traditional lighting at every level, so it’s about what’s next. What are the opportunities and possibilities for LED that traditional lighting could never offer us? That is what’s exciting.’
When the company started looking closely at its carbon footprint in 2010, lighting in Waitrose stores accounted for around 25 per cent of each branch’s electricity costs, so upgrading to LED was an obvious step to take.
At first, the focus was on the financial and environmental benefits of LED. But it soon became clear that quality of the light was a big concern – and that saving energy could mean compromising on the customer experience.
LEDs needed to be able to provide the same quality of light as the metal halide lamps which have traditionally dominated retail. It’s taken time for John Lewis to strike that balance, and make sure that the management, the engineering teams and the store design teams are all happy.
Like many retailers, John Lewis first used LEDs in its fridges and freezers, because LEDs work so well in the cold. In 2012 it did its first front-of-house LED trial in a new Waitrose store in Bracknell, and for its next new store in Stratford-upon-Avon, used LED lighting for all the front-of-house areas, achieving a two-year payback.
By 2013 it was decided that LED lighting should become standard for all Waitrose stores. John Lewis stores were a different matter, as each store is designed to be different, and store layouts change by season, so new types of light fittings had to be developed before taking the LED plunge.
In 2013 John Lewis opened a new store in Ipswich – the first outlet to be all-LED not just in the public areas but also in the warehouse, storage and service areas as well, resulting in big energy reductions and costs savings.
At the John Lewis York store that opened in 2014, the store design team had chosen much darker flooring and wall coverings, which pushed the LED technology to its limits. ‘York is still a great space, customers love it, but as engineers and designers we learnt a lot about the capability of LED when used with darker materials,’ said Toby Marlow, engineering manager for John Lewis. ‘However, the technology has already moved on and if we were doing York today we’d use a different specification. ‘In a relatively short space of the time the LED product has improved massively. The light is crisper, the technology is more reliable and the capital costs are now lower than traditional lighting on a like-for-like basis.’
Marlow said of the Philips Crisp White technology used in the luminaires: ‘We’ve done our test of the Crisp White LED and we believe that delivers 14 per cent more white light than existing LEDs while being about 11 per cent cheaper to install and reducing energy consumption by 15 per cent.’
‘Lighting makes a big difference to the ambience of a store,’ said Ken MacDonald, duty manager at Waitrose Ipswich, ‘There are very few areas that are shady and the customer offer is enhanced. We’ve had very good feedback, with people saying the store looks absolutely fantastic.’
The company will be installing LED lighting in its new stores in Birmingham, followed by Horsham and Basingstoke. The rollout in existing stores will begin with Southampton and continue with the flagship Oxford Street branch.
Tim Harrison, director of store formats for John Lewis, said: ‘We have been really pleased with results of LED lighting and that’s why we are putting our faith in it when it comes to Birmingham.’
Lux Reports: Retailers are using light as a branding tool. Primark has opted for a bright feel while the opposite approach is popular with retailers such as Hollister and Desigual. Image credit: Primark
Building brands, driving sales, controlling costs, and preserving the all-important ‘look and feel’… who said retail lighting was easy? Here are the eight biggest trends influencing retail lighting in 2015.
1. Energy Saving LED Retrofits:
Retail was one of the first sectors to start dabbling in LED lighting, because of the big energy savings that can be made by replacing electricity-guzzling halogen spotlights. Major retailers are announcing big new rollouts nearly every day: Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Next, Walmart… but it’s still a small minority of stores that have switched to the new technology, and it’s mainly the bigger chains with significant resources and economies of scale behind them. In time, though, it seems inevitable that LED will be everywhere.
OUTLOOK: Loads of shops have already gone LED but there are plenty left – especially the smaller ones.
2. Branding with light:
With stiff competition from online shopping, bricks-and-mortar retailers are having to reinvent their stores as a place where consumers can experience the brands and the product. And they’re learning to use light as one of the most effective ways to become distinctive and recognisable – each in their own way. From Hollister to Primark, light is becoming part of what makes brands what they are.
OUTLOOK: This is a trend the lighting business is well placed to cash in on.
3. New colour technology:
Colour has always been key in retail lighting. Many buyers still assume that going LED means compromising on colour quality; but if you avoid the cheap rubbish, it doesn’t have to be so. Halogen has long been the benchmark for colour quality, but in fact many LED products are now outperforming halogen and the latest colour technologies use specially tuned light to keep whites clean while making certain colours even more vivid
OUTLOOK: LED spent a long time proving its adequacy. Get set for it to start fulfilling its real potential.
4. Lights that do new things:
What if lights could guide you around a shop and send you special offers when you’re looking at particular items? Well, now they can, thanks to super-accurate positioning systems powered by LED lights. It’s done by modulating light in a way the human eye can’t see, but that can be picked up by the cameras in shoppers’ mobile phones. The light from each luminaire carries a unique code, which the phone uses to pinpoint its position. EldoLED is already installing its Lux Award-winning positioning system at retail sites in the US, GE has several trials under way at retail sites in the US and Europe, and Philips is trialling its system at a museum in the Netherlands.
OUTLOOK: We’ve yet to see it in a real-life retail application, but we’re very excited about it.
5. The flight to quality:
We’ve all seen heartbreaking examples of poor-quality LEDs in retail. A well-meaning store manager has tried to save money on energy and maintenance, and now the shop is dim, all the clothes look washed out and the customers feel like zombies. Those days are coming to an end: the wild west of the LED market is being tamed, and even those buyers who had their fingers burned (literally or figuratively) in the early days are trying again, with a renewed focus on look and feel.
OUTLOOK: Some scepticism remains, but LED is winning new friends daily.
6.Overcoming the fear:
Retailers can’t afford to get the look and feel wrong, so LED rollouts tend to be nerve-wracking. There is always a certain risk when you invest in new technology. And with no real standards for LED lighting products, we might just have to embrace that risk. With warranties, funding and improved quality, it’s getting easier, but there’s still inertia – partly the result of bad experiences, uncertainty or mistrust over exaggerated energy-saving and lifetime claims made by manufacturers.
OUTLOOK: Lighting refits are never simple, but more and more people are at it, giving buyers confidence – and it’s getting easier by the day. 7.
Justifying the spend:
It’s easy enough to prove the environmental benefits of an LED upgrade, but sadly that’s not always enough to persuade the finance department to approve the upfront expenses associated with a new lighting scheme. Imagine how much easier it would be if you could prove the correlation between better lighting and increased sales. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to separate the lighting from the myriad of other variables that influence people’s shopping decisions. As Simon Waldron, Sainsbury’s electrical engineering manager, told Lux: ‘The controllability of variables is missing. We need a standardised approach to proving the link between lighting and sales which at the moment can’t be applied.’
OUTLOOK: Don’t hold your breath for a concrete link between lighting and improved sales… but that won’t stop people looking.
8. Clients are smartening up:
Manufacturers have tried to fight LED specticism with product warranties. But the terms are usually written to protect them just as much as their clients – defining and limiting what they have to do if something goes wrong. In a lot of cases, what a warranty promises doesn’t go very far to resolving a client’s immediate problems. If your lighting installation doesn’t work, it’s not much help to ship them all back to China and wait for new ones. So clients are pushing for their own warranty terms. Like Sainsbury’s, which told manufacturers supplying kit for its ongoing LED rollout what their warranties had to say.
OUTLOOK: As trust and quality improve, and the market becomes accustomed to longer-lasting products, this issue may fade. But for now, manufacturers should expect to be kept on their toes.
Contact us for your new retail lighting project. We sell a range of LED fittings, fixtures, and lamps for the retail and hospitality sector. Call us on 0208-540-8287, or email: sales@novelenergylighting.com
When H&M arrived on Australia’s shores last year, it did so in style with a vast, mostly LED-lit flagship store in the former General Post Office building in Melbourne.
The building’s long history, and its 18 meter high ceiling, presented the facility team with a challenge of respecting its heritage while ensuring that the fixtures were as easy to maintain as possible.
This has been achieved mainly with linear LED luminaires, recessed from existing ceiling pockets, which focus the light down the central spine of the building’s three-storey glazed atrium.
Lighting designers kept in close contact with Heritage Victoria throughout the project and ensured that the lighting installation was fully reversible and didn’t do any damage to the building surface.
As well as recessed ceiling fixtures, linear LED luminaires have been placed high up to uplight the ceiling and emphasise the columns and the geometric shape of the atrium.
Lower down, mannequins sitting on swings and posing on podiums are lit with narrow-beam metal halide spotlights. The spotlights are placed in pairs on the columns around the atrium with linear LED uplights positioned in-between the spotlights to highlight the top part of the columns above.
The arcade arches around the building are lit with linear LED fixtures concealed within the structure. All light sources are warm white with a colour temperature of 3000k.
Using mainly LED light sources means the store has achieved an electrical load of 12W/m2 for the downward light and 10W/m2 for the architectural lighting to the arches, trees and ceiling structure.
Novel Energy Lighting supplies LED lamps, fittings, and controls for many retail applications. Contact us for volume quotes or for lighting designs: www.novelenergylighting.com, or Tel: 02085408287
Wide open spaces like stadiums and school fields need a lot of lighting at night. The large size of stadiums demands extremely bright light sources. During any football match, it is important that each area of the field is illuminated and clearly visible to the players and even the crowds who are watching the game. What’s more, since matches and practice games take place regularly in these stadiums, the lights that are used are expected to last for long durations without burning out in the middle of a match.
LED Floodlights
Traditional halogen and metal halide stadium lighting can exceed 1000W per lamp, and has a limited lifetime. Most stadiums and parks have dozens of such light fixtures for lighting up large open areas, which results in very large electric bills and ongoing maintenance costs (since floodlights tend to be in difficult to service areas). Additionally, these lamps emit an enormous amount of heat which makes them energy inefficient, and poses a fire risk.
To avoid the downsides of halogen and metal halide flood lighting, it is best to use LED Floodlights for all your outdoor lighting requirements. These lights do not contain any harmful chemicals like lead and mercury. Thus, they are environmentally safe, and because they are extremely energy efficient, they do not emit much heat even if used for a long duration. Their intelligent multi-core LED technology delivers a great deal of light from just small amounts of electricity, thereby reducing your energy bills by up to 90%. A 1000W halogen can be replaced by a 100-200W LED flood. LED floods also have long rated lifetimes of up to 50,000hours, which means that ongoing cost of ownership is low in terms of re-lamping and maintenance of difficult to reach floods.
Novel Energy Lighting supplies a wide range of high powered LED Floodlights, which are strong enough to light up Olympic-sized stadiums, outdoor municipal projects, manufacturing plants, large exhibition centers etc. What’s more, these lights require no warm up time, but emit light instantly when switched on. They even have a beam angle of 100 Deg, allowing them to disperse maximum amount of light all over a given place. And since they are eco-friendly, the do not emit harmful UV or IR light.
Additionally, all the IP65 versions of LED Floodlights available with us have an incredible lifespan of 50,000 hours and come with a warranty of 3 years. And along with these regular floodlights which deliver a cool white and warm white light with color temperatures of 6000K and 3000K respectively, we also have the Slimline range of floodlights, which are designed for commercial and showcase lighting purposes.
Lighting.co.uk reported – 50,000 LED luminaires have been installed by National Car Parks (NCP) since January, almost bringing phase one of the multi-million pound project to a close.
Phase one of the £10 million project includes the installation of over 60,000 LED luminaires across 149 multi-storey car parks throughout the UK – from Scotland to the South Coast. NCP is effectively relighting 45,000 car parking spaces. The retrofit is expected to save 11,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year and slash energy consumption on car park lighting by 65 per cent.
LED luminaires
The fittings are being supplied and installed by Future Energy Solutions (FES). Phase two of the project is expected to take another two or three years. The contract is funded by FES in partnership with the Green Investment Bank, eliminating the need for any up-front capital from NCP. Instead, NCP will pay out of the energy cost savings over time.
All the installations are maintained for the life of the contract at no extra cost to NCP. FES is installing around 22 types of LED fitting across NCP’s car park stock. One example of the retrofit underway includes the swap out of single 50W T8 fluorescent tubes for 29W LED alternatives.
FES commercial director Marcus Brodin told Lighting: “NCP’s CO2 emissions will be reduced by 11,000 tonnes per annum and mono-nitrogen oxide will be lowered by 248lbs over the same period. This is the equivalent of 10,924 trees being saved or filling up 321,695 fuel tanks every year.”
This is the first transport infrastructure project to qualify for the Government’s UK Guarantee scheme, which was launched in 2013 and which NCP says was vital to the success of this opportunity. NCP manages more than 150,000 car parking spaces across more than 500 car parks up and down the country, and expects the LED retrofit to lead to multi-million pound savings on energy over the lifetime of the new luminaires.
FES has is using a variety of controls across the NCP car parks, depending on the needs of individual spaces. “We have site-specific controls, it depends on the nature of the car park,” explained Brodin. “Strictly speaking we have a load of PIR controls in over half of the luminaires, along with daylight harvesting; the rest are standard or emergency fittings.”
Bodin said the contract does not have a clear end date, as NCP is constantly growing. “Every year NCP wins new contracts with councils or builds new car parks, so it’ll be on going. It’s a moving feast constantly.”
Novel Energy Lighting supplies a wide range of high quality LED lighting products. We stock the entire Philips Master LED and Megaman LED range of lamps, bulbs, and tubes. We can supply a large range of LED fittings range, including the best-selling Philips Coreline recess downlights, and FYT ceiling panels. Most of our products come with 3-5 year guarantee and a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. Energy saving is up to 90% and up to 50,000 hours rated lifetime.
LUX magazine reports that like most people in the lighting business, I’m often asked by acquaintances for advice. Usually, my friend’s building project has come to a crucial stage. I receive an email with the subject line ‘Urgent lighting advice’, links to the John Lewis website and the comment, ‘What do you think of these???’
Needless to say, at this stage no one wants to hear me spouting off about design concepts or reinterpretations of the architecture. They want me to endorse their tasteful choice of luminaires from John bloody Lewis. My brother and his wife once proudly showed me their £4,000 installation of Chinese LED downlights which put splodgy pools of light on the carpet and nowhere else. ‘Very contemporary,’ I said.
No one, as far as I know, has ever acted on my advice. So I thought I’d compile a list of some general principles of lighting for my acquaintances to ignore. These are not all mine; most are accepted orthodoxies. And they’re general principles – for each a professional could come up with a further list of caveats and addendums. But if you follow them, I believe you’ll create a far better scheme than the average. And if it stops someone spending £4,000 on downlights, I’ll have done my job.
1 Use a professional lighting consultant if the budget permits.
2 Think first about the lighting you want to achieve rather than the technology.
3 Maximise daylight if you can.
4 Light for the people who’ll use the space and their tasks.
5 Invest in the interior: the secret of good lighting is having good stuff to light.
6 Layer the light: ambient, then accent and task.
7 Light the walls rather than the floor.
8 Light the ceiling rather than the floor.
9 Don’t be afraid of darkness (at least pools of relative darkness).
10 Never ‘floodlight’ a building – you’ll flatten it.
11 For exteriors, pick out architectural details unseen in the day.
12 Be brave enough to use colour in any scheme, but only as an element.
13 Don’t obsess about uniformity; it’s overrated.
14 Follow the codes and regs, but they’re no substitute for common sense.
15 The most efficient light is the one you’re not using – use design to reduce energy use.
16 It’s better to use lots of low-output lights rather than a few higher-powered ones.
17 Conceal or integrate the majority of light sources.
18 For groups of pendants or wall lights, use odd numbers of fittings such as three, five or seven to achieve the ‘harmony of repetition’. It works!
19 It’s better to use pendants decoratively rather than as the workhorses of a scheme.
20 Consider control at the outset – different tasks and times of day need different light levels and even colour temperatures.
21 If the controls aren’t simple to use, they won’t be used. Give users four labelled buttons (‘meeting’, ‘presentations’, ‘lunch’, for example, and an ‘off’).
22 Don’t assume compatibility between lamps, drivers and dimming controllers: test them.
23 Buy lamps (and even LED luminaires) in batches to ensure they match in colour and output.
24 Don’t assume a high CRI number will ensure good colour rendering (it doesn’t include strong reds, for instance). Find out the product’s R9 value.
25 Buy from reputable manufacturers – otherwise it’s a false economy.
26 Don’t be missold by optimistic maintenance factors. You don’t want a dim space in three
years’ time.
27 Know what warranty you’re getting by reading the small print. Better still, write your own.
28 Futureproof your project: Make sure you can replace failed lights with matching kit.
29 If there’s no maintenance plan, assume the scheme won’t be maintained.
30 Finally, if you can’t find all the numbers you need on a spec sheet, don’t buy the product.
Novel Energy Lighting supplies a wide range of cost-effective LED lamps and fixtures. These are cost-effective and deliver paybacks of less than 1 year, while lasting over 10 years. We provide full LED range at competitive prices. Most of our LED lights have up to 5 years warranty and 30 days satisfaction guaranteed. Moreover, these lights offer lifetime cost benefits with up to 90% energy savings and up to 50,000 hours of operational lighting. LED Lighting is recommended for cost efficiency and energy savings.
Lighting enhances our ability to see things and our surroundings. Natural light may not reach closed areas of the home at all times, so we rely on, artificial lighting. Poor lighting in the home may affect eyesight, and can ruin the ambience of our living spaces. Moreover, frequent replacement of lighting tends to burn a hole in the pocket. So, why not invest in quality lighting? LED lamps, bulbs, and tubes are the best lighting solution when it comes to saving energy and usage costs. Megaman is a reputable lighting company that manufactures quality LEDs.
Megaman Led
Megaman has been in the lighting industry since the year 1994. It started off with CFLs, but soon moved to manufacturing LEDs. In 2009, it released its first range of LED reflectors with TCH technology. Since then, it has continuously strived to manufacture and upgrade its LED lighting range. It aims at making low-energy and eco-friendly lighting products. Its LED products are sustainable and provide a high degree of flexibility and design. These LEDs come in a wide range of colour temperatures and output options. These lights produce long life up to 40,000 hours with a high luminous maintenance.
Novel Energy Lighting sells the whole range of Megaman’s quality LED lighting at competitive prices, some of which include the 8.5W LED GLS Opal dimmable bulb, 4W LED MR11 non-dimmable lamp, and the 4W, 6W, and 7W LED PAR16 (GU10) Spotlights.
Retail lighting has come a long way in the last couple of years: LED payback time has shortened and expectations have risen, but end users still have to check for dodgy specs. Kathrine Anker reports:
Every time Lux brings together manufacturers, designers and end users to discuss retail lighting, things have changed dramatically since the last time. It’s not long ago that LED was a prohibitively expensive technology for some, and not good enough for others, but things have moved on pretty far since then.
Our latest retail lighting forum, in association with Microlights, got off to an optimistic start, acknowledging that a lot of education has happened. ‘I think all clients have become discerning,’ said Theo Paradise-Hirst, head of lighting design at NDYLight. ‘They’ve realised that lighting is the absolute key driver to making retail work. There is more knowledge and appreciation of colour rendering and you can have conversations with clients that you’d never have had 10 years ago about the exact colour temperature and materials.’
Adding to the optimism was a consensus that payback time for LED lighting has come down to a level that will please most finance directors. Leases can be short in retail, so a quick return on investment is more important than it is in other sectors. Three to five years appeared to be the accepted threshold for most end users around the table, including those responsible for lighting in Sainsbury’s, Harrods and John Lewis, and they all agreed that we are getting there.
From the suppliers’ perspective, the maturity of the UK lighting market is to blame for the slow climb toward the tipping point. ‘Retailers in the UK have been very switched on for a long time and market prices for conventional technology are very low,’ said John Chamberlin, sales director at Microlights. ‘Because the price point is so low in the traditional lighting market and you’re starting from a very low price point, it’s taken this long for LED solutions to pay back. But that tipping point is gone now – we’re getting under two-year paybacks in some cases.’
Hitting the tipping point where cost is no longer prohibitive means some end users can start to think about using LED luminaires not just as a secondary light source but as the main one, said lighting designer Keith Ware: ‘We’re starting to see more use of LED as the primary light. For the first time, it feels like LED is actually a credible technology, that we can start to talk to our clients about full LED schemes. Retailers are willing to go with it because they are starting to look at the whole life cycle and the payback.’Tipping point aside, payback time still depends on what you’re replacing. Alan Patton, M&E manager at B&Q, said: ‘If you’re replacing T5, they are very good already so the payback time of a retrofit will be five to seven years. You can still get your energy consumption down by switching from T5 to LED, but it’s at a cost.’
Horses for courses
Despite the LED hype, retail estates are still predominantly lit by fluorescent T8 – LEDs make up less than five per cent of fittings in retail stores, according to a recent survey conducted by BRE. And ultimately, as Phil Caton, director of PJC Light Studio, pointed out, the best system is the one that delivers. ‘If you’ve got a high ceiling you’ll struggle to get the same punch from an LED fitting as you’ll get from a metal halide, unless you significantly increase the size of the fitting – and nobody wants to see big, clunky fittings in high-end retail stores,’ Caton said.
He added: ‘We get the feedback that LED doesn’t give the same depth – the quality of light is much flatter, even when you play with contrast ratios. When there are multiple LED sources in a fitting we have the problem of fringing and shadows around the product, and dimming still gives problems with modulations, so LED won’t be the total solution for the foreseeable future.’
Theo Paradise-Hirst added: ‘Over time some LEDs don’t render colours as well. It’s not just the output, sometimes you have to be aware that there might be colour changes. If you go to galleries that are lit with LED, they look great on day one but after a while something
MANAGING PERCEPTIONS
Light levels can get shamefully high in retail and it often falls to designers to argue for a more restrained approach. ‘Competing shops in a beauty hall don’t look at the relative brightness in the room, they just want to have the brightest shop. So light levels go up and up, completely unnecessarily and the products end up looking all bleached out,’ said Maida Hot, managing director of lighting design company GIA Equation. ‘Trying to find a balance that creates a luxurious feel is quite a challenge. Everyone puts in more, just in case.’
Most of the designers taking part in our retail lighting forum had encountered clients with excessive and unnecessary light level demands. ‘It’s all about perception,’ said Keith Ware. ‘When a client says ‘I want 1,000 lx’, that’s not a lighting brief – that’s just a statement. You need to ask, what is the lit effect you’re trying to create?’ Ware told the roundtable that his company, Dalziel and Pow, successfully convinced Primark to bring down the light level in its shops to below 1,000 lx. ‘We arranged a test with a lighting consultant to prove to Primark that they didn’t need 1,500 lx everywhere. You could bring the level down to 800-900 as a general average – of course with higher contrast on the walls and better vertical on the fixtures off the aisles. But we cheated a little bit – when we did the test we reduced the light to the level we wanted before the test started. When they arrived they said: “This level is great, now we need to reduce it.” That nailed it completely, because it made them realise that there are better ways of designing a lighting scheme to a lower lux level if you get the contrast right.’
