LED concept and reality

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LED concept and reality

Singapore, 9^th July 2014

While the Indonesians have a day off to vote for their new president, work on our sides just moves on.

I often state to my clients that a lighting concept is as good as the reality of its finished implementation, and very often these are 2 worlds apart. We all start dreaming on how beautiful we can create the lighting in a project and some projects are really an open goal so to speak, where architecture, interiors or landscape have such striking features that just simply lighting them up is a sure hit.

But with the advent of LED technology and even more the compactness and opportunity to integrate the technology in building materials, we need to have a far more hands-on strategy and approach to our design, in order not being caught out at the end. Not so much with the architectural lighting where, as long as we stick to integrated COB LED technology, we are pretty sure things like dimming etc. will work out, but more with FFE items like chandeliers, floor, wall and table lamps, or even integrated façade lighting. In these cases the manufacturers are still very much in conventional lighting mode and while we may conceptualise our designs with LED lighting the provisions, lamp holders, and cabling may already been developed the “old” way. We encountered that recently when we were testing LED retrofit in chandeliers.

In order to avoid wiring and control issues at a later stage we need to become more pro-active in the early design stages and engage with these peripheral “lighting” manufacturers so that these fixtures are LED ready and with that I mean integrated LEDs and not retrofit LEDs. We learn along the way…engage, communicate, resolve…

Light watch 5-112: Meanwhile lighting installations keep amazing and mesmerizing us time and again…