IMAGE CAPTION: Color scale of Kelvin Temp Light Options
Determine Your Current Lighting for Factories
LED lighting for factories can save 30 to 50% of the lighting energy cost, but only if you install them properly! Choosing the Lightbulb color is just as important as choosing the right color paint for a remodel. Before making a large lighting retrofit, look at the lamps and fixtures you currently installed. In most offices and machine shop floors these are flourescent tube lamps. Their color is usually 4100Kelvin, or slightly pink-white. Not the best light, but remember you are working with old technology so it was the best at the time it came out – in the 1950s.
Make survey of all the Lighting for factories. Note what type of lighting it is; incandescent bulbs, or Fluorescent tube fixtures, or maybe even the old style metal halide arc lights. Each of these will have a distinct color of light; the incandescent being yellowish, the florescent are more pink, and the metal halides are usually bright white.
Lightbulb Color Matters
However, the LED lights come in a large variety of “colors”, or shades of white also. They range from almost orange, to yellow, to creamy white, to pink-white and even light blue. Look at the image in this article and note which lighting types give off which colors. Yellow lights are better for mood lighting and showing off displays of food, deserts and other items you may eat. Office spaces need to have middle tones of pink to creamy white, which yield two benefits; keeping people awake and reducing eyestrain. The factory shop-floor benefits the most from a more blue-white light. The human eye can discern fine details better (think of reading fine black text on white background), and this light color more readily reveals flaws in products.
These rules-of-thumb will serve you for LED lighting for factories as well as office buildings. Good luck. Post here or in our Forum if you have further questions. We have already answered at least one or two lighting questions there.
