How Can Commercial Lighting Be Both Eco-Friendly and Efficient?

Lighting in commercial spaces often covers a large area, requires high demand, and operates for long periods of time. As a result, energy consumption inevitably increases, making it one of the important energy-saving and emission reduction projects in engineering construction. Traditional light sources have gradually become inadequate, making the use of green and energy-saving lighting in commercial spaces an inevitable trend for sustainable development.

Energy-saving lighting products have gradually gained popularity due to their high efficiency, energy-saving, eco-friendliness, and long lifespan, especially in functional lighting applications such as commercial spaces, road lighting, tunnel lighting, and public lighting.

How can we create different atmospheres in commercial spaces, increase space diversity and levels, and make commercial spaces more design-oriented?

1. Reasonable use of natural light

Soft and clear natural light can provide maximum energy for daytime lighting. Making full use of natural light can minimize the use of artificial lighting, reduce energy consumption, and is one of the ways of green lighting design. By increasing the number of windows, enlarging the window area, and avoiding the use of lightless designs, indoor spaces can adopt glass curtain wall design or courtyard design.

2. Choosing suitable light sources

The use of suitable electric light sources is an important factor in green lighting. With the development of technology, the performance of electric light sources has also improved, and energy-saving light sources have emerged one after another. Traditional lighting electric light sources have gradually been replaced by the most popular new energy-saving LED light sources.

Compared with traditional lamps, LED lamps are brighter, more environmentally friendly, and more energy-efficient. LED is recognized as the “green lighting” of the 21st century, which is made of semiconductor materials and converts electrical energy directly into light energy. It has high photoelectric efficiency, and features of “high energy-saving”, “long lifespan”, “versatile”, “environmentally friendly”, “high-tech” and other characteristics. LED general lighting has become the industry hotspot with the most market potential.

Compared with traditional high-pressure sodium lamps, halogen lamps, fluorescent lamps (daylight lamps), and other lighting products, LED has the following advantages:

1). Long lifespan: can be used for more than 30,000 hours, which is 5 times that of traditional lighting products

2). High luminous efficiency and good color rendering: luminous efficiency of 100lm, narrow spectrum, good color rendering, true color presentation, and more convenient for object recognition

3). Easy installation: no need for rectifiers and other accessories, directly install the light on the lamp holder or embed the light source in the original lamp shell

4). Low heat generation: the temperature can be controlled within 50 degrees Celsius in summer and can be passively cooled

5). Low maintenance cost: the maintenance cost of LED lighting products is extremely low compared to traditional lighting products, and modular integrated design can be used, so that local failures do not affect the normal operation of the entire lamp

6). Good energy-saving effect: can save more than 50% energy compared to traditional lighting products

7). High safety: driven by safe voltage (low voltage), stable luminous, no strobe or ultraviolet damage

8). Quick response: LED light-emitting tubes have a short response time and can switch between multiple light sources or different areas of one light source according to requirements. When a dedicated power supply is used to supply power to the LED light source, the time to reach the maximum illuminance is less than 10ms

9). No light pollution: The directional emission characteristics of LED light sources make it easy to control the distribution of light (lighting design), ensuring ideal lighting effects, while eliminating LED glare and greatly improving LED energy utilization, eliminating light pollution

10). Low light loss: The integrated design of the luminaire avoids the repeated waste of light

11). Adjustable color temperature: It can meet the needs of different applications for color temperature, making the observer feel more comfortable

12). Green and environmentally friendly: It does not contain pollutants such as lead and mercury, and has no pollution to the environment

The selection of color temperature of the light source also has a certain effect on people’s comfortable perception. The color temperature will produce different light colors. Therefore, different occasions should also choose different color temperatures, such as warm yellow light is best for restaurants and cafes, and warm white light is best for shopping malls.

3. Reasonable lighting intensity

Reasonable lighting intensity is very important for space. If the illuminance is too dark, it will make people feel visually tired; if the illuminance is too bright, it is easy to produce glare, and the human eye is easily stimulated by light. In the space lighting design, the glare value (UGR) is uniformly used to evaluate the psychological feelings of people in the indoor space visual environment. Under the premise of meeting the standards, lighting methods such as direct lighting, semi-direct lighting, indirect lighting, semi-indirect lighting, and diffuse reflection lighting can be selected according to the needs of commercial space.

Green and energy-saving lighting design has become a development trend. As designers, we must first establish awareness of energy conservation and environmental protection and introduce the concept of low-carbon energy conservation into the design. When choosing a light source, natural light sources should be considered first. In the absence of sufficient natural light sources, high-efficiency and energy-saving LED artificial light sources should be selected to reduce energy consumption. Canco Lighting has always been seeking products with less glare, better light output, best color rendering, highest efficiency, and easier use, and energy efficient lighting products that last longer even under harsh environmental conditions. We design the most optimal and environmentally friendly commercial lighting spaces while meeting the basic requirements.