Parking Lot Lighting Helps Customers Feel Safe

If you are a proud business owner, you certainly want to excel in your field. There are some very smart ways of doing this. You want to do things that bring repeat customers. You can accomplish with by, first and foremost, make your customers feel valued. Allow them to see that you understand the fact that without them, your business could not survive.  Do you want your customers to feel safe when they enter your parking lot? Of course you do. This is why adding quality lighting in your parking lot  is essential.

If you are establishing a rapport with your customers, then you likely know many of their names. This gives much more depth to the idea of keeping them safe. How can  quality parking lot lighting keep them safe you ask? Just think about the things that are happening in our world today. There are people who refuse to leave their own home after dusk. Wouldn’t it be gratifying to know they will still come out to visit your establishment, despite nightfall, simply because you’ve made their safety a priority? With the right lighting, customers will be worry-free of getting out of their cars to come inside, because any danger lurking is visible.

How Manufacturing Lighting Benefits from LED Technology

Increased global competition has forced manufacturers to produce their goods more efficiently. Increased efficiency demands less time intensive, resource intensive, and energy intensive manufacturing processes. In terms of energy efficiency, it is useful to expand your attention beyond the manufacturing process to include the energy consumption of the entire plant. You will find that keeping your plant well-lit over multiple shifts consumes significant energy. If you aren’t using LED lighting, then you stand to gain substantial energy savings. Why turn your money into waste heat using old and inefficient lighting?

Beyond the energy savings, LED technology benefits your manufacturing operations in many other ways including:

  • Increased worker productivity. LEDs produce a white light that is similar to daylight except that it doesn’t contain UV light. This reduces eyestrain and worker fatigue. This similarity to daylight also boosts worker mood, alertness, and productivity.
  • Increases accuracy in production tasks. The colors of objects as they appear to the human eye depend on the lighting source. For example, candlelight renders colors differently than daylight. The fuller spectrum light of LEDs improves the worker’s color perception, which is important in many production tasks. This reduces mistakes.
  • Reduces maintenance costs. The longer working life of LEDs translates to reduced maintenance costs. This includes labor costs and the cost of using specialized equipment for reaching high ceilings and other hard to reach areas. LEDs are also vibration resistant, which increases their longevity in vibration filled environments.
  • Reduces air conditioning costs. The extensive lighting of manufacturing facilities produces waste heat that adds to the air conditioning load. Using cooler LED lighting reduces your air conditioning costs and increases worker comfort.
  • Increases the professional appearance of your facilities. While a well-organized and clean manufacturing floor is important for projecting professionalism, it isn’t enough when the area is dimly lit. The bright white light of LEDs remedy this. The appearance of your facilities affects worker morale and influences the decisions of touring VIPs.

All the above benefits as well as reduced energy consumption serve to increase the efficiency and productivity of your manufacturing plant, which in turn increase your business’s competitiveness.

Design Considerations in Hotel Lighting

Many elements contribute to the success of a hotel, and hotel lighting is one that can make a huge impact in how customers perceive a hotel. Attractive fixtures enhance a room’s appearance, and bright lighting can project a cheery ambience, while dim lighting can lend a mysterious air to the establishment. At the same time, lighting must meet the needs of the hotel guests.

Whether the hotel guest is in town for business or leisure, the room should contain a variety of lights for different tasks, moods and times of day. There should be overhead lights as well as bedside and desk lamps. Bathroom lights should be bright enough to allow guests to easily perform the tasks required in getting ready for the day. A floor lamp near an easy chair provides good light for reading.

Dimmer switches help satisfy guests with different brightness needs. One room may house a businesswoman who requires ample lighting as she works late into the night on a big presentation scheduled for the next day, while the room adjacent holds a vacationing couple who desire dim, romantic lighting. Dimmer switches allow the guests to adjust the brightness to their liking.

The fixture style helps establish the ambience of the hotel, both in public areas and guest rooms. The style of the fixture should fit well within the overall decorating style of the room and coordinate with other design elements. Take shape and material into account when selecting fixtures for a particular room. For example, a modern, geometric, stainless steel fixture will look out of place in a room decorated with a traditional brick fireplace and claw foot arm chairs.

The Future of Lighting

Imagine a world where light switches don’t exist. Your factory floor is illuminated only when and where it needs to be. Your administration offices feature light fixtures that have more intelligence, providing services, such as public address, WiFi, and security, and they’re incredibly energy-efficient. This is the future of lighting. And you can make it happen today.

Already in the marketplace, there are light bulbs and lighting fixtures which produce some of these effects. High-efficiency LED bulbs are already available for most industrial and commercial needs, and they aren’t even custom-designed. You can find LED bulbs designed to fit most existing receptacles, and while the price is currently slightly prohibitive, it will go down. LED bulbs that replace the old tube fluorescents are already available, and in the near future will have additional features.

Light fixtures that detect motion are also already available, but this is a flawed technology in that it only activates lighting when there is motion in a room. Future lighting fixtures will contain heat and motion sensors, turning on lights when a warm body is in the room, even if that person isn’t moving enough to trigger the motion sensor, enabling good lighting for office workers, and reducing the turn-off time once everyone has left for the day.

Lightbulbs containing WiFi repeaters or security cameras are also already available, although these are consider niche products, your business could definitely benefit from converting to the secure wireless connections offered by these ‘near-future’ systems, especially once they’re integrated into a single bulb or fixture. Costing slightly more to implement, the cost savings add up over the increased lifespan of newer bulbs. And newer bulbs are living longer and longer with every iteration.

Consider the future of lighting your workspace now, and invest in better illumination for the future.

Quality Lighting to Keep a Workplace Safe

Quality lighting solutions are a necessity when it comes to keeping a commercial office space, retail center, warehouse, or mercantile occupancy safe for their employees and a building’s means of egress well-lit. Severe weather, fires, and threats by an intruder can all contribute to the need for quality lighting to be present and maintained at a workplace. Relumination can provide services and quality products that will keep a business during an unforeseen catastrophe.

Escape Routes

The proper interior lighting can provide illumination to an escape route for employees or customers during a crisis. Relumination is able to provide energy-efficient lights that are in good working order. It is important for companies and building owners to be ready for any type of evacuation situation, such as a fire or tornado. Clearly marked and well-lit escape routes are important to all of the occupants of a structure.

According to the Health and Safety Authority, “All workplaces must have clearly identified means of escape in the event of fire.”

Employee Safety

Employees working in a building want to fill safe at their job. Good lighting and emergency exit signs go a long way in offering assistance to workers during unplanned events that require immediate evacuation and the need to find an exit door quickly. Keeping a means of egress marked and illuminated may also contribute to less slips, trips, or falls in the workplace. This is good for the general well-being of all employees, and also for keeping worker’s compensation losses to a minimum.

Smart Interior Lighting

With the exception of kitchens, interior lighting is too often an afterthought in our homes. Besides ambient lighting, such as recessed overhead fixtures, we also need low-level accent lighting to create a mood, navigate through areas we’re not using to get to a room we are using, and so forth. And of course, we need plenty of task lighting for food prep, grooming, reading in bed, indulging in hobbies, and working in our home offices. Besides being functional, we also want our lighting to add to the beauty of our homes through our choice of lamps, fixtures and placement. To that end, let’s explore some of the smart, functional and beautiful ways we can use interior lighting throughout our homes …

Ambient Lighting

This is the type of light you’re most likely to flip a switch for as you enter a room. It usually comes from overhead and can include chandeliers, pendants, sconces and architectural lighting such as cove, soffit or recessed lights.

Task Lighting

Task lighting is designed to illuminate a specific function. It’s important to choose task lighting based on what you do that requires a focused light, because everybody’s task lighting needs are different. Do you need more light for reading in bed? For doing paperwork in your home office? For food preparation? Make a list of the places you’re likely to need good task lighting before you buy.

Accent Lighting

Accent lighting is used to highlight a particular area, a piece of art or a special feature in a room, or to set a mood or provide atmosphere indoors and out. It’s a powerful and creative design-enhancing tool too often overlooked.

Embracing Energy-Efficient and Economical Solutions to University Lighting

Universities across the country are homes to millions of students, many of which can be found “burning the midnight oil” while studying for exams on campus. One way or another, proper university lighting is essential. Now, more than ever, colleges are finding ways to make their lighting energy-efficient and economical.

Northern Arizona University (NAU) has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Interior Lighting Campaign, winning awards in the categories Best Use of Lighting Controls in a Single Building as well as Exemplary Higher Education Sector Site. By switching the lighting in the Student and Academic Service’s Building to LED technology, NAU has significantly cut unnecessary energy usage, saving both energy and expenses.

Meanwhile, Boston University has been going across campus and replacing its usual metal halide bulbs, which have been prominent in its outdoor lighting, with LED bulbs. Over fourteen different lighting retrofitting projects have been completed at Boston University since 2008, when the sustainability initiative began. In the new Center for Student Services alone, the implementation of LED lighting has decreased energy consumption by fifty-three percent.

Tufts University has embraced both LED lighting and motion sensors. The first college to sign the EPA Green Lights pledge (an agreement to improve the lighting in ninety percent of their floor space), Tufts has achieved this and more. By investing in LED lighting and motion sensors to shut lights off in empty spaces, the university has saved approximately $91,930 and 876,024 in kilowatt-hours.

By embracing sustainable forms of university lighting, colleges can become more energy-efficient and save expenses.

Improve the Mood of Your Hospital by Upgrading the Lighting

You can improve the mood and health of the patients and staff in you hospital by upgrading the lighting. Hospital lighting has a great effect on anyone who spends a lot of time in the hospital. Below you will find five benefits to upgrading your lighting.

1. Increased productivity: with brighter lighting, employees will feel better, and produce higher quality work.

2. Better sleep for your patience: everyone needs a certain amount of light for their body to function well. If the light is lacking, people have trouble sleeping.

3. Improved mood: increased lighting can boost the moods of your patients and staff. Low lighting produces fatigue and total mood disturbance.

4. Quicker healing: when your patients are exposed to brighter lights, it reduces the time that it takes for their body to heal.

5. Improved moral: when the hospital is lit properly, everyone is functioning at their best. This helps to improve the mood of everyone that spends any time at the hospital.

The above reasons to upgrade your lighting are just a few. With better lighting in your hospital, everyone will feel the difference and be happier. The best source of light is the sun, but for the patients that have to be in the hospital, the brighter lighting will be better for them than the traditional low lighting of a hospital.

Want to Improve Your Grocery Store’s Lighting? 3 Reasons Why LED Lighting Fits the Bill

A grocery store is not just a building with aisles full of food. It can contain quite a few departments including meat, deli, seafood, bakery, produce, and sometimes a pharmacy. Then you have the front desk, break room, warehouse, refrigerator, freezer, loading dock, and general storage room. Switching to LED is one of the smartest things that you can do when you want to upgrade the lighting as a whole.

Light Is Always Needed

Every one of these departments or areas require lighting for efficient operation. This means you will need to have the lights on in most of the grocery store at all times. Since LED lighting is so efficient, you should be able to see a noticeable difference in your energy costs when changing all of the lights over to LED.

Brightness Is Key

An often overlooked advantage of LED lighting is the fact that it takes no time to reach complete brightness. This means that as soon as an employee walks into a room and turns the light on, they can start working. While this may only save a few seconds, over time it can amount to hours or even days. Also, it is easier for your employees to be safe when they have full illumination for handling tasks.

Spend Less on Cooling

It is important for a grocery store to be kept at a cool temperature at all times. This is especially true in the deli and meat department, as well as the refrigerator and freezer storage rooms. LED lights do not produce heat, so you do not have to worry about combating with lights that heat up these areas. Ultimately, this upgrade to better lighting will also provide you with lower cooling costs.

Six Advantages of LED Lighting over Fluorescent Bulbs

Incandescent lights produce so much heat, they can burn your skin when touched. They were even used to heat toy ovens sold in the 1960s. That they’re energy inefficient is beyond dispute. On the other hand, fluorescent lights are considered an energy-efficient alternative to incandescent lights. But how do they stack up against LED lighting? Here are six comparisons:

  • Fluorescent bulbs emit omnidirectional light while that of LEDs is directional. Fluorescent bulbs radiate light 360 degrees around the tube’s circumference. Only a small percentage of this light is directed to the area directly below (such as at a desk in an office). The rest radiates in less useful directions unless the bulbs are installed inside reflectors, which still scatter some of the light. On the other hand, LED lights are directional in that most of their light radiates in a 110 degree arc. They don’t require the bulky reflectors of fluorescent tubes.
  • LED lighting is more energy-efficient than fluorescent bulbs. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a 12 watt LED light puts out the same lighting as a 15 watt fluorescent light. In other words, LEDs use 20% less power.
  • Fluorescent bulbs emit UV light. Fluorescent bulbs emit some UV light, which is hard on the eyes and causes color fading in fabrics. This is wasted energy. LED lighting does not emit UV light. In fact, its light emission lies entirely in the visible light range.
  • LED lights last longer than fluorescent bulbs. LED lights last up to 13 times longer than fluorescent bulbs. This means a big savings in maintenance costs.
  • LED lights are more rugged than fluorescent lights. LEDs are solid state lights, which are more damage resistant than the fragile tubes of fluorescent lights. Breaking fluorescent bulbs also exposes one to mercury.
  • LEDs do not flicker near the end of their life. Fluorescent lights go through a period of flickering before burning out. However, the usefulness of the light ends when the flickering starts.

Finally, fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, and may therefore present waste disposal issues.