Careful design of the lighting for your home will ensure that the right amount of light is gets where and when it is needed and can be switched on conveniently. Lighting should avoid over-lit areas, and give control and flexibility to create lighting effects for different situations. Well-designed lighting will be inherently easier to use and will function in an energy-efficient way.

The best approach to home lighting design is to use three levels of lighting: general lighting, task lighting and accent lighting. By combining these three levels, the recommended lighting level for each room or activity should be obtained, as below: 

Recommended lighting levels for the Home	in Lux
Living rooms general	50-150
Casual reading	150
Study	150-750
Bedroom general	50-150
Kitchen general	150
Kitchen working areas	400
Bathrooms	150-300
Halls and landings	100-150
Stairs	100-150
Dining rooms	150-450

The three levels of lighting

General lighting should ensure a sufficient minimum level of light in the room. There are plenty of LED light sources that can be used for this purpose: LED modules, strips, luminaries or spotlight. Decide on the desired illuminance level (lux). In living rooms and bedrooms in particular, give a certain degree of flexibility (through control settings/dimmers) so that occupants can raise or lower the general lighting around the set level. Design for the upper end of the Lux ranges in homes with elderly occupants, which generally appreciate a higher level of general lighting. A minimum level of general lighting is required for safe movement in the home, especially on the stairs, but sufficient general LED lighting is considered important for general well-being.

Workplace lighting is needed for certain activities at home, such as reading, preparing food and working from home. LED lamps must be carefully selected, correctly positioned and controlled. Recommended are LED spot lights and high flux LED modules. Lamps or sockets are needed in the right places to ensure flexibility in the availability of work and accent lighting. Depending on the task, LED workplace lighting may be required at different levels. The colour rendering of the light is also very important for some activities and we recommend LED lights with CRI 95 or more.

Accent lighting contributes to the ambiance of a house and is usually done with LED spots and strips. As with workplace lighting, LED luminaires (or sockets) are placed in the right places to emphasise architectural features, furniture and ornaments. Accent lighting is a more personal matter, and depending on the circumstances, spotlighting or floodlighting can be useful.

For each of these levels of lighting, controls can provide a range of lighting options. So in an living room there could be separate controlled circuits for:

• general lighting 
• task lighting (typically positioned under the wall units) 
• accent lighting 

Similar control patterns can be considered in other rooms, with dimmers providing a different lighting atmosphere in salons, dining rooms and bedrooms. Advanced controls, sometimes controlled by a mobile phone or a tablet app, that allow remote adjustment of the amount of light and its color are increasingly popular. Lighting is establishing itself as a lifestyle statement and houses with new and innovative lighting systems are perceived as a marketing advantage.

Lighting of each room in detail:

Living rooms

A cove luminaire is a light line that can be made via an LED strip that is hidden within a Cove in the wall or ceiling that illuminates an adjacent surface. Light is reflected from this surface into the room to be illuminated. For this reason, light lines are generally referred to as cove or indirect lighting.

Cove lighting is a popular trend in lighting design, focusing on human nature and the behaviour of natural light. It is widely used today, with light lines as the main method of lighting interiors.

The attraction is the similarity with the natural light. With the right light source we could imagine that the bay is actually a hidden window to the outside from which the sunlight streams in.

Let's see how we can achieve the best results with cove lighting.

1. Use of energy-efficient light sources

Choose LED modules or strips with high energy efficiency, at least 100 lm/w, and place them within the coving light so that most of the emitted light uses the reflective surface, wall or ceiling that directs it into the interior. Waste of energy for lighting the interior of the bay should be avoided. LED strips with 120-180° are recommended, which should be placed at an angle if possible:

Surfaces that are more absorptive than reflective, like dark paint or wood should be avoided unless the design is primordial to energy efficiency. White ceilings produce the best results.

2. Select an LED light source with the correct light output.

Human Centric Lighting (HCL) is an illumination specially designed to have a positive physiological and/or psychological effect on humans. It consists of adjusting the colour and intensity of the light throughout the day using adjustable white LED lighting solutions.

HCL supports human health, well-being and performance by considering and properly planning the implementation of a lighting system according to the desired visual, emotional and above all biological effects of light. Human Centric Lighting focuses on the needs of people for their living, leisure and working environment. The study is based on the properties and effects of natural light, a dynamic source of changing tone and brightness that changes throughout the day and seasons. 

A combination of white LED light sources, usually warm white (2700K) and cold white (6500K), is used to provide adequate human-centred lighting. This solution is also called Tunable White lighting. By adjusting the intensity of each individual, bright or dull white light with a hue between 2700K and 6500K can be achieved. It is a new way of using and implementing artificial light, corresponding to the changes of natural light and research on the effects on humans.

1. More light, more productivity

Increased lighting intensity allows people to work more concentrated, less tired, make fewer mistakes and more accurately identify mistakes. And what makes life more pleasant for the individual is more lucrative for the company as a whole.

2. More concentration and creativity

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Posted in LED Lighting Knowledge

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Posted in LED Lighting Knowledge

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Posted in LED Lighting Knowledge

CRI is a monovalent quantification of how good (or bad) an artificial source is in color rendering compared to a reference standard illuminant modeled after daylight.

It was introduced in 1974 by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) because the possibilities of coloring with the white light of the many types of gas lamps that were then on the market are very different. Today, with over 40 years of use, the CRI index is firmly rooted in the lighting industry and among professionals.

However, it did not meet with much approval from the general public, since shortly after its introduction it no longer really became relevant to the decision to purchase lighting.

The reason for this was that most lamps were built for specific applications that required a minimum CRI value, so the choice of lamp could not be wrong.

For example, for office or any other linear lighting, almost everyone used the Tri-Phospor linear fluorescent tubes that have been on the market since the 1970s, all with CRI over 80. For the home, you had the choice between incandescent lamps and halogen with both CRI100 and retail and other high-intensity spot lighting, where the metal halide lamps with CRI min 85. The street lighting was reserved for high-intensity and very efficient sodium vapor lamps, which despite poor CRI very few interested.

LED technology changed this in 2000. It is the first light source that can be used for any application and offers the full range of performance and quality, including the ability to accurately reproduce colors. This is because LEDs are installed directly in luminaires, lamps and strips, as shown in the example below:

The makeup of some fixture types for common applications, such as down-lighting, spot-lighting, office-lighting and street-lighting. All can use LEDs.

The Color Rendering Index, commonly referred to as CRI, is a method by which we can measure how color looks to the human eye, depending on the light source compared to the sun. The CRI offers a scale of values up to 100, where 100 is the best color rendering light quality and a value below zero is very poor color rendering. The higher the CRI value (also called CIE Ra), the more accurate the colors are.

If a luminaire has a CRI of 100, this means that there is no difference in colour rendering between the light and the reference light (the sun). Likewise, a CRI of 75 means that the light bulb reproduces a 75% replica of the visible colors shown by the sun, since both lights have the same color temperature. This means that if the reference light is the light of the sun during sunset, the light source to be measured must also have the same color temperature to allow the most accurate comparison with the CRI measurement.

To obtain white light from an artificial source, a combination of different emitted wavelengths is required, something that was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century.  From then on many "recipes" to produce white light and combine the  different wavelengths were invented and still are.

The color temperature of daylight changes during the day, from 2000K at sunrise and sunset to 5500-6500K at noon. In the shade it can even go up to 8000-10000K.