Lighting by Application
Lighting by application
Nobody walks in wanting a 150 watt UFO high bay. They walk in with a building. Find the space, get the fixture type, the light level to aim for and the mistake that costs a callback.
Light levels below are the general target measured at the working surface. They are starting points for pricing a job, not a substitute for a photometric layout on a large building.
Warehouse and distribution
10 TO 30 FCHigh bays above fifteen feet, strip fixtures below that. The mistake: round UFO fixtures over racked aisles. A UFO throws a circle, an aisle is a long rectangle, so most of the output lands on top of the rack instead of down where the picker is. Run linear high bays along the aisles.
Manufacturing and assembly
30 TO 75 FCHigh bays for the general layer, task lighting on top where the work is fine. The mistake: ignoring the ambient temperature rating. An uncooled plant in August is nowhere near the 25 degree lab condition the lumen numbers were measured at, and a driver rated to 40 or 50 degrees simply lasts longer.
Cold storage and freezers
20 TO 30 FCVapor tight, gasketed, rated for low ambient. The mistake: assuming any wet location fixture works. LEDs like the cold but drivers and gaskets do not always, and door cycling drives condensation. Check the low end of the temperature rating, not just the high end.
Auto shop and service bays
50 TO 75 FCLinear high bays or strip fixtures over the bays, with high colour rendering so paint and wiring colours read true. The mistake: mounting too high. In a bay you want light down into the engine bay and under the lift, not a wash across the ceiling.
Open plan office
30 TO 40 FC2x2 or 2x4 in the grid, 4000K, dimmable. The mistake: flat panels in a room full of monitors. A large uniformly bright surface overhead shows up as screen reflections and a harshness nobody can name. Center baskets recess the source and fix it.
Classrooms
30 TO 50 FC2x2 center baskets, 4000K, dimming for projector use. The mistake: forgetting egress. Emergency and exit lighting is a separate requirement with its own inspection, and it is cheaper to spec it now than to add it after the walkthrough.
Clinics and exam rooms
50 TO 100 FCHigh CRI at the table, softer general lighting around it. The mistake: speccing on lumens alone. In a room where somebody is judging skin tone, colour rendering matters more than raw output. Look for CRI 90 and above.
Corridors and stairwells
10 TO 20 FCWraparounds or slim panels, usually on occupancy sensors. The mistake: running them at full output around the clock. A corridor that nobody is in for eight hours a night is the easiest energy saving in the building, and stairwells have their own egress rules.
Retail sales floor
30 TO 75 FCGeneral layer plus accent on displays. The mistake: lighting everything evenly. Contrast is what pulls the eye to a display, so feature areas want two to five times the general level rather than the whole floor going brighter.
Gyms and rec centers
30 TO 50 FCHigh bays, wide beam, with impact rated lenses. The mistake: chasing the average and ignoring uniformity. On a court you want a tight 2:1 average to minimum, which is why these layouts come out denser than a warehouse of the same size.
Parking lots
0.5 TO 3 FC AVERAGEPole mounted area lights, distribution matched to where the poles sit. The mistake: quoting on average foot candles. A lot averaging 1.5 can be 6 under each pole and 0.2 between them, and the eye adapts to the bright spot and goes blind to the dark one.
Parking garages
5 FC, 10 TO 20 AT RAMPSVapor tight or canopy, wet location, impact rated. The mistake: speccing damp location because there is a roof. Cars carry water in, floors get washed and wind drives rain into the perimeter bays. Garages are wet locations, and the fixtures run twenty four hours.
Building exterior and security
5 TO 10 FC AT ENTRIESWall packs on the building, floods for facades and yards. The mistake: buying on wattage. Mounting height decides the fixture, and a growing number of jurisdictions now require full cutoff and cap colour temperature outdoors.
Fuel canopies and car washes
20 TO 30 FCCanopy fixtures under cover, IP66 vapor tight in the wash tunnel. The mistake: treating an IP rating as corrosion protection. It is not. A wash tunnel and anywhere near salt water need a housing finish rated for it, so ask for salt spray data.
Walkways and campus paths
0.5 TO 2 FCBollards along paths, area lights on the wider runs. The mistake: over lighting. On a path, evenness matters far more than brightness, and a bright pool every forty feet reads worse than a lower, continuous level.
Loading docks
20 TO 30 FCHigh bays or strips inside, wall packs outside, dock lights at the doors. The mistake: lighting the dock and forgetting the apron. Trucks back into the dark, and the approach usually needs its own fixture.
Most of what we carry is wattage and colour temperature selectable. That means you can lock the layout in now and set the output after you have walked the space with a meter, without reordering. How selectable fixtures work.
Tell us the building, not the part number
Square footage, ceiling height and what happens in the space. We will come back with the fixture, the count and a price you can drop straight into your bid.
Send us the building