David Shiller

  HBSD’s Golden Hammer Awards Hardware & Building Supply Dealer has opened nominations for its annual Golden Hammer Awards, recognizing outstanding new products in hardware, home improvement, and building materials. The program highlights products that advance industry standards while delivering benefits to professional contractors and retail customers. Entries will be judged on three criteria: innovation, [...]

  LiteTrace Brands, a USA company headquartered in Maryland, announced that its Keilton+autani networked lighting controls system is listed on the DesignLights Consortium (DLC) Networked Lighting Controls Qualified Products List under Technical Requirements V5.2 with an NLC-integrated thermostat. Autani, a LiteTrace Brands business, is the first and only NLC-integrated thermostat manufacturer on the V5.2 list, [...]

  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 [...]