Workplace Lighting

How Lighting Affects Workplace Performance –

Obviously there’s much more to selecting lighting for a workplace than picking a fixture that is aesthetically pleasing, sufficiently illuminating, and energy efficiency. Designing a workspace with the “right” lighting can deliver the optimal place for employees to think, create, collaborate and maintain optimal productivity.

In other words, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to lighting in the workplace. In this article we discuss three examples of lighting considerations that can help an employer provide lighting that is the most conducive to a productive workplace environment.

Install Individual Lighting Controls

Studies have proven that giving employees a degree of control over their environment – whether it be lighting or temperature – helps people feel better about their job and therefore become more productive.

Installing lighting controls for individual offices, workstations or work areas allows employees to create the atmosphere that they need to be productive at work. This involves more than just “on-and-off” switches, and contemplates dimming or brightening controls, and in some cases even directional control of lighting.

Daylight Enhances Performance

Architectural elements that allow sunlight into a room not only dramatically decrease the energy consumption, but also improve productivity. Recent research conducted by the World Green Building Council discovered that workers who are exposed to daylight are actually 18 percent more productive.

This is because daylight helps regulate employees’ circadian rhythms. When circadian rhythms (humans’ “internal clocks”) are “off”, people experience stress that negatively impacts productivity – but a building that incorporates daylight can actually improve performance and productivity.

Further, installing soft indirect lighting to can serve to blur the distinction between interior workspace and outside perimeter space – further improving the work environment and bolstering productivity.

Cool Versus Warm Lighting

Traditional bulbs (illuminated by electricity passing through a wire) gave a warm, yellowy light – the color of which could not be varied. However, with the advent of LED lighting, you can choose the color of light you want.

In the workplace, the two most common color options are warm white and cool white. Warm white and cool white are measured on a kelvin scale with warm white lighting around 2000k to 4000k and cool white lighting around 5000k to 7000k.

Warm white lighting has a very yellow and even orangey tone to it – similar to traditional incandescent bulbs. It is best used in areas where an employer wishes to keep people relaxed. Break-rooms, restrooms, libraries, hotel rooms, lobbies, psychiatrists’ offices, etc. are ideal locations for

Cool White Lighting is a very bright, clean, “blue-white” light – more similar in color to natural daylight.  This approximation of sunlight creates an environment that keeps workers alert. Cool white lighting can improve concentration and enhance employee productivity.

Mid-white lighting – between 4000k and 5000k also has its specific usages. This color of lighting is ideal for conference rooms and client meeting areas, where it is warm enough to be welcoming but cool enough to still promote alertness and productivity.

Detroit’s Leading Commercial Lighting Supplier

If you are an electrical contractor with questions about the best lighting options for a particular space, call the lighting experts at Team Electrical Sales. We have the experience, the inventory and the low prices you need to help you make the best lighting choices for your unique project.

Converting to LED

Is LED Lighting Right for Your Company?

In 2007, the federal government enacted the Energy Independence and Security Act, which is aimed at implementing a gradual phase-out of incandescent bulbs – because of their energy inefficiency. Incandescent bulbs lose about 90% of the energy they use as heat. And while the law does not ban incandescent bulbs altogether, it does effectively ban the manufacturing and importing of the majority of incandescent bulbs – in hopes of decreasing energy usage as well as lowering harmful emissions.

Currently LED lighting is the most efficient lighting technology on the market. LED lamps can last more than 20 years, as well as reduce energy costs by 75%.

Lighting accounts for about 21 percent of all the electricity consumed by businesses. When you “do the math” it becomes clear that switching to LED lighting can reduce a company’s total electric bills by 15%. And that is a substantial savings, year after year.

LED Lighting: More Durable, Less Expensive to Maintain

In addition to its longevity, LED lighting is also more durable and less expensive to maintain than the fluorescent or high intensity discharge (HID) lighting currently in use by many businesses.

Department of Energy forecasts that LED will account for 80% of the entire lighting market by 2020.  And according to recent post research released in the Edison Report, global revenue for the LED lighting market should reach $216 billion by the year 2024.

The benefits – and cost savings – of switching to LED lighting are well documented. But what does this mean for businesses that already have a substantial investment in buying and installing incandescent, fluorescent or halogen fixtures? Well, the good news is that businesses do not need to replace their older fixtures in order to upgrade their lighting to LED – thanks to a variety of affordable upgrading solutions – including “retro-fit” kits designed to fit almost any existing fixture.

This growth coincides with a dramatic increase in commercial retrofit projects while LED prices continue to decrease. Nearly all designers and project managers have begun to consider LED lighting for installations across a wide variety of applications, and Navigant Research expects this fast-paced transition to LED to knock incandescent and halogen bulbs out of the market by 2024.

LED Lighting Produces Less Heat & Uses Less Energy

It is important, however – when considering either installing new LED fixtures or retro-fitting existing fixtures – to understand the disparity between low quality and high quality LEDs. Higher quality LEDs produce less heat, use less energy and last for decades. In fact certain of the highest quality LED lamps have extended lives of up to 219,000 hours (12 hours a day for 50 years!)

Investing in quality LED lighting solutions will save any business money by reducing energy costs – in most cases reducing electric bills by at least 15%.