David Shiller

  One of the most searched topics on the LightNOW website is “sources for reflectances.” This article is intended as an introduction on where to locate light reflectance values (LRVs) for different building materials / surfaces. Room-surface reflectance should be based first on the specified product—not a generic “ceiling/wall/floor” default. The most defensible sources are [...]

  Smart Street Lighting Enters Its Next Growth Phase The global smart street lighting market is moving beyond isolated pilots and becoming a mainstream element of municipal LED modernization. Berg Insight estimates that the worldwide installed base of individually controlled smart streetlights reached 38.5 million units at the end of 2025 and will grow to 87.6 million units [...]

  New York City’s first enforcement year for Local Law 97 produced high reporting and compliance rates, indicating that most covered buildings were able to meet the law’s initial greenhouse-gas limits or satisfy alternative requirements. The harder challenge, however, lies ahead: substantially tighter 2030 caps will require far more extensive building retrofits, including electrification, envelope [...]

  For lighting manufacturers, traditional thought leadership is no longer only a brand-building or media-relations activity. White papers, technical case studies, trade-press bylines, association participation, winning industry awards, and conference presentations can now also improve how often—and how accurately—a company appears in AI-generated answers. This is known as Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). AEO matters because [...]

  AMP Lighting has expanded its AMP iQ Smart Landscape Lighting System with the Smart RGBCW LED Deck Light, Powered by AMP iQ, bringing intelligent color and white-light control to outdoor applications. Designed to provide subtle, low-glare illumination, the compact fixture combines durable cast brass construction with flexible lighting capabilities that enhance safety, define architectural details and create ambiance. [...]

  Here are three newly published IES standards: ANSI/IES RP-27-26 Recommended Practice: Photobiological Safety for Lighting Systems Normative & informative references added, change to the 500-lux distance calculation, UV radiation Risk Group duration, NEI setting, optical system notes, average of subtended angles, changes to the lumen-to-radiant power conversion, revisions to Table A-2 Spectral Weighting Function, [...]

  There is a new trend in high output, recessed, flat panel high bay fixtures, but it is a selective application trend, not a wholesale replacement for conventional suspended linear or round high bays. The product concept—high-lumen, recessed, nominally flat-panel luminaires in a ceiling grid—has real momentum where building owners want industrial/high-bay illumination without the visual [...]

  UL Solutions’ new vehicle-to-grid certification program gives manufacturers a formal pathway to validate bidirectional EV charging equipment for safe, reliable utility interaction—an important development as transportation electrification becomes part of the distributed-energy landscape. For the lighting and electrical industry, it signals that EV infrastructure will increasingly be evaluated not simply as a load, but [...]

  SOB LED strip lights stand for SMD On Board (or sometimes Silicone On Board), and it is a hybrid next-generation technology designed to bridge the gap between traditional SMD (Surface Mounted Device) and COB (Chip on Board) strips. How SOB Differs from COB Construction: While COB strips mount bare LED chips directly under a single continuous layer of phosphor [...]