Lighting Design

ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR recently published a lighting column I authored on the topic of the Light Right Survey Tool, available here. Developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, it enables building owners/managers and lighting practitioners to inventory and evaluate lighting systems in office spaces. Available free, the Light Right Survey Tool can be used: • As a [...]

Guest post by the New Buildings Institute Researchers continue to broaden their knowledge about the ways light impacts the circadian system and rhythms such as the sleep/wake cycle. Generally, it’s been shown that exposure to strong light levels during daytime hours makes us more alert and focused through the day, while minimal light exposure in [...]

Independent of country of residence, the 637 building/design industry practitioners responding to the IALD Certification Survey indicate the seven domains of professional practice researched by the Credentialing Task Force accurately reflect the practice of architectural lighting design (average rating 4.1 out of 5) and are important to the profession (average rating 4.66). The primary purpose [...]

The average shopper spends seven minutes in a retail store. If the store environment engages a shopper, 80% will make a purchase. What can lighting do to attract, engage and convert potential buyers? Matthew Cobham of Philips Lighting University discusses retail lighting in this fascinating webinar, covering: – Essentials in retailing lighting – The growing [...]

Lighting choices can affect how we perceive spaces, even the colors of objects and surfaces. As a result, lamp color characteristics are a critical factor in a wide range of spaces, from high-end retail, where merchandise must be presented as vibrant and in its true colors, to offices, where good lighting renders faces naturally and [...]

Another amazing project from the folks at Focus Lighting … As the entry piece at the Boffo Show House, Focus Lighting’s interactive installation – “Cloud” – unifies the four Show House experiences by ushering guests in with a veil of ever-changing color overhead. The LED nodes illuminating the 200 tubes and uplighting the ceiling above [...]

Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Software Engineer for Lighting Analysts Inc., wrote an interesting whitepaper, Classifying Outdoor Luminaires: The Limits of BUG, available for free download here. The abstract: “The IES BUG rating system is useful for classifying outdoor luminaires when considering light trespass, sky glow, and glare in accordance with the Joint IDA-IES [...]

Update: I’ve been hearing some people had problems opening the survey link. Not sure what the problem might be, but everything is testing out here on Windows 7 with both Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. The link is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NALCAC_JA_SURVEY. On behalf of the Lighting Controls Association, I have been supporting the efforts of an [...]

Focus Lighting posted this video showing different effects that can be achieved with light in product demonstration, using only a single DLP projector. (No effects or adjustments other than cross fades were added.) Says Focus: “Inspired by 3D projection on buildings, we’ve been experimenting with ways to use video in retail to bring products to [...]