Codes + Standards

  The integration of bird-friendly measures into the widely recognized Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification system is both progress and controversial in protecting avian species from building-related threats. LEED, managed by the U.S. Green Building Council, has been a global standard for sustainable architecture since 1998, with more than 100,000 certified properties [...]

UL completed a revision of ANSI/UL 1574 Edition 3, the safety standard covering track lighting systems. The revision is dated February 6, 2025, and includes the following changes in requirements: Installation Instructions published on the publicly available website; 84.1.2. Inherently protected recessed luminaire assemblies; 3.30A, 36.6, 36.7, Table 54.1, Section 54A, and 83.12 Flammability of [...]

  The CIE has recently published a new technical report and an international standard: Technical Report: CIE 255:2025 – The Functional Visual Field, 44 pages Technical Report CIE 255:2025, titled “The Functional Visual Field,” provides a comprehensive review of human visual field studies. The report aims to enhance understanding of the visual field’s role by classifying [...]

  Here are four recently approved IES standards:  ANSI/IES TM-39-25 Technical Memorandum: Quantification and Specification of Flicker  This Technical Memorandum (TM) catalogs currently documented metrics and specification criteria related to the human perception of periodic TLM and summarizes existing research. It identifies a path toward an IES standard method for quantifying and specifying flicker for architectural [...]

  The Hort V4.0 draft was sent out for comments in November and the comment period concluded in December. With few comments received, DLC is preparing to release the final V4 Technical Requirements, in March. Hort V4.0 introduces three key updates to the Hort Technical Requirements that support the acceleration of energy efficient lighting in [...]

The dirtiest little secret in LED lighting is that luminaire lifetime values are nearly meaningless for the vast majority of luminaire manufacturers. Why is this? Two reasons: First, all manufacturers typically report TM-21 LED chip projected lumen maintenance values as the luminaire lifetime. This does not include the driver nor other components. Drivers have historically [...]

The International Commission on Illumination (CIE) issued a Position Statement on Color Quality Metrics, its second edition, recommending the improvement of color rendering metrics for white light sources. The statement highlights the development of the CIE General Color Fidelity Index (Rf) in 2017 as a solution to technical issues with the older CIE General Color [...]

  BS 8887-221:2024 is a new British Standard that provides guidelines for the remanufacturing of luminaires. It is part of the MADE (Manufacture, Assembly, Disassembly, and End-of-life processing) suite of documents and addresses the growing need for sustainable practices in the British lighting industry. It could provide a glimpse at how North American remanufacturing could [...]

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and 15 state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over new energy efficiency standards for certain single-family homes and multifamily housing programs. The lawsuit, filed on January 2, 2025, in the [...]