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Enhance your lighting & reduce bills WITHOUT LEDs?

Author
Kevin Stubbs FSLL
Category
Insight
Date
November 22, 2018

Get 1000% more light using a paintbrush?

If your “up lit” application has been blessed with a black ceiling finish, you could improve your lighting on the task plane by painting the ceiling White instead of Black, fortunately, the galvanised trunking in this application gave a tiny contribution, as did the architectural downward light feature window. Also note the lamps here were beyond life expectancy so a lamp change alone may have given another 100% improvement (and that’s before you consider an LED update and controls, of course, we might even get to 5000% improvement) 100 Lux from 10 Lux by better reflectance = 1000%, double this with a new metal halide lamp, double it again with lighting control (although metal halide lamps are not best, you could switch 50% of the lights off) and finally you could double this efficiency with a new LED system and optic (even more efficient if more direct component considered and dimming introduced).

Uplight shining on to a black ceiling

With concrete?

Save 100% of your buried uplight running and maintenance costs by filling them with concrete!

Buried uplights can be a liability to maintain, they often fill with water, sometimes via capillary action (surface tension/meniscus effect) drawing water through incorrectly specified multi-core cables that seem properly glanded and sealed.

Buried uplights can give great lighting effects and are often the only solution in some outdoor schemes but think of the whole electrical system and future lifecycle maintenance when designing buried luminaires into these harsh environments in your project.

Buried uplight
Buried uplight filled with concrete

Contact Llumarlite for help with maintaining or replacing your lighting installation, it might save you more than you think!

(Note - Although the concrete solution might be good for maintenance and running costs - its not one of ours, it can dramatically reduce light output and detract from the desired night-time environment!)