Not at the expense
of quality
High-quality light, as produced by full-spectrum lamps, has
always had a special significance for people's perception
and experience. Light therapy against depression is the
best example of this. Of course, the textile merchant, just
like the fruit seller around the corner, also knows that
high-quality light makes their products particularly tempt-
ing. At the dawn of LED technology, efficient lamps that
produced a lot of light from little electricity were available,
but this light was not of particularly good quality. This has
changed radically within a few years. Today, LED lamps
are available that have the same light quality as a halogen
lamp or the sunlight whose power and magic are experi-
enced by people enjoying the sunrise on a mountain peak
or the sunset on a beach.
The question now is: Does bricks-and-mortar retail need
exactly this outstanding light quality to offer its goods in a
particularly convincing way? And does this light really help
to sell more products, perhaps even at a better price?
Engineers and energy consultants calculate that a highly
efficient light source consumes about 15 percent less
energy than an LED with a higher colour rendering index.
In purely mathematical terms, it therefore makes a consid-
erable difference whether 1000 spotlights with 30 or 26
watts are used on the sales floor. Only based on technical
data, a lamp is used that makes more sense for industrial
and commercial areas. But this is not how human eyes,
brains, and certainly not stomachs, work when it comes to
bringing people back to the city centres and appealing to
them emotionally.
This is clearly shown by lighting tests in retail. With a very
good colour rendering index, the light in most retail spaces
can be dimmed by more than 25 percent without custom-
ers noticing. The majority of the test persons surveyed
experienced the luminosity of the products and the au-
thentic overall effect of the sales floor as more enticing
and impressive when dimmed by 40 to 50 percent. With
rising electricity costs, even the additional expense for
lighting control over the entire area pays for itself within a
very short time. Thus, as lighting architects, we are already
implementing projects like Kastner & Öhler in Innsbruck,
together with sustainably producing manufacturers, and
save the most energy by using the best light qualities.
Reinhard Vedder, lighting designer, VEDDER.LICHTMANAGEMENT
“ The strength of bricks-and-mortar retail is
the immediate visual and haptic experience of
the products. New lighting design strategies
are therefore needed to focus on the right
energy-saving technologies.”
Reinhard Vedder
Lighting designer, VEDDER.LICHTMANAGEMENT
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