May 2024

  The holiday light installation industry began with lawn care businesses and local electricians looking to make some extra money installing holiday lights, before the holidays. It’s now becoming a fast growing, mature industry. Existing service businesses that add holiday light services see profit margins from 25-45%, while primary lawn care service profit margin may [...]

    Two lighting control trade shows + conferences have emerged in the past couple years: 1. NYControlled produced by IESNYC & DLFNY, and 2. the DLC Controls Summit. Here is an update on each. Both are occurring in October, this year.  NYControlled  The 2024 show has been announced for October 29th, 2024, 11am – 7pm [...]

The lighting controls industry continues to take small steps toward lighting-HVAC controls integration. This post will dig into the new Light Solutions Application Guide from Autani-LiteTrace and give a quick overview of their system’s approach and capabilities. As context, Autani (BMS) and LiteTrace (Keilton Bluetooth lighting controls) merged last year. The merger’s original motivation had [...]

  By Namrata Naidu, Digital Marketing Team, Comet Lighting Ceiling lighting plays a pivotal role in any architectural or interior design project. It sets the mood, illuminates spaces, and even contributes to a building’s energy efficiency. Ceiling lighting has seen significant advancements, creating a broad range of innovative solutions. This post will examine the latest [...]

  MIT researchers have just demonstrated that temperature is not the only energy driving water evaporation. The team discovered that visible light can create water evaporation. This fact was not previously known. The discovery could solve unanswered atmospheric questions and lead to new technology advances. Although water is almost transparent to visible light, the team [...]

  A viral debate has erupted on TikTok between interior designers and whether there should be an end to the “big light,” a phrase for any overhead or ceiling light. With the rise of more indirect, portable, accent, and task lighting, softer ambient lighting options are available without the central ceiling light. An article by [...]

  ALA’s next member forum will be hosted Wednesday, May 15, at 12 p.m., CDT. This forum, designed for manufacturer members, will cover the extended producer responsibility laws related to plastic and packaging, which are becoming commonplace. Rachel Michelin, president, of the California Retailers Association, will lead the forum with a brief presentation, followed by an [...]

Graphene has long been hailed as the greatest material discovery with limitless potential. The reality is that graphene has seen some limited applications in electronics, solar panels, displays, clothing, helmets, bullet-proof armor, aircrafts, and shoes. I’ve written about graphene’s emergence in luminaire heat sinks and housings here. There are two new nanomaterial sheets making headlines: [...]

  The LED lighting revolution has been remarkable, but one of the areas where LED technology has struggled to match legacy sources is ultra-narrow beam angles. Halogen, plasma, and lasers were more ideal point sources for ultra-narrow spotlights. For a time, LED could only get down to about 20o beam angles, and more recently 10o [...]