lighting is directional and has high efficiency per watt">
Some traditional lighting causes high air-conditioning heat loads, the need for continual globe replacement and high energy costs.
In addition, many retail outlets look the same. Retailers often seek high intensity lighting to stand out from the crowd, making the problems above worse. Fortunately, LED lighting offers the retail industry a win-win situation.
Solid state lighting or light emitting diodes (LEDs), available from Eco Living Centre , have reached a maturity that addresses all of the problems associated with some traditional lighting.
Plus they are not toxic, having no mercury waste disposal. To the retail lighting designer LEDs offer more scope to brand an outlet and really make it stand out from the crowd, without resorting to high lumen intensity (now capped by the new building codes).
The nature of LED lighting requires a different approach to lighting design, and not just allocating one globe per metre of retail space with a white colour.
LED lighting converts 95% of its energy to light. Its beam is highly directional; this attribute can be used to focus the light on merchandise one wants to feature. The intensity of the light is achieved with low wattage, often between 10-27W.
Directional lighting can also be used to help merchandise sparkle. By using small diodes in a strip, the multi-point light will reflect from jewellery, china, metal, etc.
The LED option does require more thought, but gives the retail industry more scope to stand-out and more effectively position their store, while at the same time lower their energy costs and assist in improving the sustainability of their store, as well as gaining the benefit of going green.
In the USA, where 22% of energy bills are lighting, they have calculated they will save in excess of $20billion over the next 20 years and not have to build 13-15 power stations, if LED lighting replaced current lighting. With this incentive people can expect more news on LED lighting in the near future.