Musings from a Lighting Designer

The holy grail of LED downlighters has finally arrived! Hot off the press from Cube Lighting comes The Purple Snowflake.

This magnificent luminaire has a light output equivalent to a 45W 12V halogen but consumes only 16.8W at a very impressive 58 lumens/watt for the warm white version, and 86 lumens/watt for the cool white. Mounted in the same elegant, beautifully proportioned, low glare fitting as Cube’s other halogen downlighters it looks fabulous in the ceiling. Rated IP54 it comes with a 5 year guarantee and comes as standard with a mains dimmable driver. What’s not to love?

Cube Lighting Purple Snowflake

With the building regulations requirements for high numbers of low energy fittings in domestic properties it is very good to see that LED manufacturers have started labelling some of their products as being L1A compliant. With things moving as fast as they do with LED technology there are already LED components being made with lumen per watt efficiencies far greater than compact fluorescents. It is now possible to use LED downlighters in place of halogen downlighters on an almost one for one replacement. The only barrier now to massive take-up is cost!

I was very pleased recently to discover that another manufacturer of low energy lamps has joined Megaman in developing compact fluorescent lamps which are dimmable. The range is called DigiFlux, and can be seen at:

www.varilight.co.uk

Lighting design is a very fulfilling occupation. It can be tremendously exciting to see the end results of a lot of blood sweat and tears. A house well lit. Sparkling. Attractive. Welcoming. Thrilling! But often there is a little nagging voice at the back of my head that says “But what is the cost to the environment?”. I work hard to create energy sensitive schemes but there are times when low energy lamps just don’t do the job. And there are times when a lot of watts are needed to create the desired effect. There is however, I have just discovered, a simple solution to this dilemma. The answer? To encourage my clients to move to an energy supplier such as “Good Energy” who only supply energy from renewable sources (e.g. windmills and hydro-electric schemes). WowLighting is now offering a financial incentive to clients who move to “Good Energy”. I hope that many clients will choose to do this and will report back in a few months as to how this has gone. If you are interested in going green take a look at the following website:

http://www.good-energy.co.uk/

Every thought that light fittings are all well and good but that, by and large, they just arn’t huggable enough? Well now, thanks to the creative ingenuity of Diana Lin Design, you can now buy a huggable light shaped like a cushion and just as cuddly. Using the ubiquitous LED, as a light source and wrapped up in such a way as to be soft and sensual, the Rei cushion is just the thing for a cosy night in. Take a look for yourself at:

http://www.dianalindesign.com/products/rei.html

Yanko Design have created a stunning and hugely practical ’2D’ table lamp that uses solar energy collected during the day to provide lighting at night. The idea is to put the slender lamp close to a window so that when you get home at night there is sufficient light to find your way around the room. 10/10 for looks and 10/10 for eco friendliness. Visit the following link for a look:

http://www.yankodesign.com/solar_lamp

Here is an example of corridor lighting that has a dynamic effect. It seems to almost pull you through the corridor in a slightly hypnotic way. Perhaps not suitable for viewing while under the influence of alcohol! It is nonetheless a novel idea that excites and engages the brain. Take a look at the following link to see some images:

www.spittler.de/service/pdf/BBA06_BFW_Goslar.pdf

Scunthorpe is experimenting with a very unusual and inventive way to tackle anti-social behaviour in the city centre. The aim is to scare away the troublesome youths by bathing the problem areas in pink light! This is apparently the best colour of light to highlight pimples and blemishes. It is hoped that the troublemakers will be so conerned about how they look while causing trouble that they will search out areas bathed in a more flattering light that hides, rather than emphasises, their skin condition!

I am not sure if I love or hate this revolutionary new product! What is it? It is an elegant stainless steel tap for use in bathrooms that employs a colour changing LED to make the water coming out of the tap glow in a colour that reflects how hot the water is. Red for hot, blue for cold, and something in between for something in between, Take a look at http://www.equasystem.com/eng/index.htm and see what you think!

Ingo Maurer, perhaps the world’s greatest living designer of luminaires, has worked his magic on the iconic Atomium in Brussels. As part of a £19m refurbishment he was entrusted with designing the lighting for the interior spaces. For a taste of the genius that is Ingo Maurer take a look at the following web page:

http://www.designboom.com/snapshots/milan06/ingo.html

Take a look at any contemporary interior design magazine these days and you are sure to see somewhere in its pages the use of a bare light bulb as part of a lighting scheme. This is very retro. Very minimalist. It can look great, but it can also look as if the lampshade is missing! Fortunately some designers are now incorporating the bare light bulb concept into their luminaire designs. A perfect, and exquisitely elegant, example of this is Sofie Refer’s Bulb Pendant. Take a look at the following web link and see what you think:

www.retromodern.com

A survey conducted by Cree at this years Light+Building trade fair in Frankfurt showed that 61%, of the trade fair exhibitors who were asked, thought that LED lighting would replace fluorescent lighting in office and commercial spaces within 5 years.

Lamina Ceramics is launching a new ultra bright warm white LED at the 2006 Light+Building show in Frankfurt. This is designed to be powerful enough to replace halogen and tungsten filament lamps.

The new Atlas line is the same size as the company’s exisiting BL-4000 line, but twice as bright.

The Atlas Warm White LED produces more than 100 lumens, and creates a light output similar to a 10-watt halogen bulb but uses little more than half the power, and lasts 3-4 times as long.

In a study published in the latest issue of Nature magazine, scientists from the University of Michigan describe how they have created wafer-thin sheets that, when connected to an electricity supply, can be made to create enough light to fill a room. Because these sheets do not create any heat the scientists claim that they are 100% efficient and can create up to five times the amount of light as a conventional light bulb. With an anticipated life time of 5 to 10 years they may well be the lighting of the future!

It is good to see that lamp manufacturers have started making customer friendly lamps for the low energy light fittings required by Building Regulations Part L. Philips has recently launched special versions of its Softone range.

Leafing through the mountain of catalogs and trade journals that litter my doormat every day is a little like rumaging through an old curiosity shop looking for something special. Every now and then something really catches my eye and makes me go wow! See what you think of this pendant. I love it!

http://www.luziferlamps.com/mikadoen.htm

The Department for Education and Skills has a Classrooms of the Future project that is investigating new ideas on how school buildings should be built in the future. An example of their work so far can be seen in the London suburb of Richmond were a couple of schools have had some very novel classrooms added. The central belief behind the new buildings is that “the quality of the environment in which you learn, and in particular the light, space, colour and sound, make a real difference to how quickly you learn, and how much you enjoy learning”. To this end the designers have created an exciting and unusual way of lighting the space. Take a look at www.future-systems.com and see what you think.

For those who still think it will be many years before LED light fittings are used for general illumination in homes, there is a suprise coming! The leading supplier of residential lighting in North America, Progress Lighting, has announced that they will be launching a complete line of LED lighting products for the home this summer. The fttings will use warm white LEDs with efficiencies of more than 40 lumens/watt (high enough to meet the new Building Regulations L1A requirements for low energy lighting). What is more, unlike normal fluorescents, the LED light fittings will be dimmable using a standard dim switch!

In slightly over a week the new Building Regulations Approved Document L1A takes effect. From that date the requirements for using low energy lighting in homes will become much more stringent. However I am pleased to see that the final L1A document differs from the draft in one important aspect. The use of the word ‘or’ instead of the word ‘and’ means that the requirement for using low energy fittings with an efficiency of greater than 40 lumens per watt is now stated as one per 25 square metres OR one per four fixed fittings. This gives lighting designers a little more scope as to how they choose to comply with the new regulations. I predict that this tightening of the low energy requirements will have the beneficial effect of fast tracking LED lighting into homes.