Commentaries

Opinions | Commentary | Feb 27, 2021

From Kelly to Double Dynamic Lighting

by Henrik CLAUSEN. Henrik has worked in the lighting sector for almost 30 years, collaborating with architects, interior designers and specialist lighting designers. Read more »

Commentary | HCL | Health + Wellbeing | Jan 13, 2021

Good Light Helps Prevent Winter Dip

The holidays are over, it's cold and dark, we prefer to sit inside. Nevertheless, you need a daily portion of good light: it makes you more energetic, happier, and healthier. Make sure that you go outside for a good time every day and that you also have enough good light indoors during the day. Daylight is best, but there are also good alternatives with LED lighting and light therapy lamps. Read more »

Kenneth Martin from Zumtobel about Comfortable Lighting

Kenneth Martin has been specifying, qualifying an developing components and characterization setups for LED light sources within the Zumtobel Group since 2006. With his expertise on spectral measurements and applications, he supports integrative lighting solutions topics. He gathered valuable knowledge in physics and optical system engineering while studying at the University of Applied Sciences RV-Weingarten, during the internships at a quality assurance department of a reflector aluminum manufacturer and the optical development department of Zumtobel. He combines his enthusiasm for lighting and sustainable construction engineering with a DIY philosophy. Read more »

Paradigm Changes in Lighting Are Challenging Lighting Companies

Fabien Bubendorff has a Master in Electronic Engineering and has 10 years' experience in the lighting industry. He has spent more than 13 years living in China. He worked as a Product Manager for a Retail Lighting Company, for the Last 5 years he was responsible for Wever&Ducré as the Head of R&D in China and for the last years Head of R&D at XAL in Austria. Now he has founded an independent consultancy to support European Lighting Companies to deal with these future challenges. He specialized in finding the optimal balance between function and cost to increase product profitability. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Smart Lighting + IoT | Health + Wellbeing | May 04, 2020

Personal Lighting Profiles Might Be the Key to Creating a Natural "Work Light Balance"

Commentary from LpR 76: Henrik Clausen has been involved in lighting for over 30 years in both commercial and academic positions. In 1996, he became the Managing Director of Fagerhult Lighting in Denmark, and held that position until 2004, when he founded the Fagerhult Lighting Academy. In 2015 he also became Head of Research for Fagerhult. He holds a position as professor in Lighting Design at AAU in Copenhagen. He guest lectures at various Universities around the world. He speaks worldwide, primarily addressing the human and emotional aspects of light and lighting design. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Health + Environment | Quality | May 04, 2020

Providing Better Light Should Still be the Focus of the SSL Industry

Commentary from LpR 75: As President of Bardsley Consulting, Norman advises industry, government and academia on solid-state lighting, flat panel displays and energy efficiency, with special emphasis on diffuse lighting and organic electronics. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Team for the Solid-State Lighting Program of the US Department of Energy. Dr. Bardsley also acts as Chief Analyst for the International Solid-State Lighting Alliance (ISA) and is a member of the UNEP Expert Task Force on LED Lighting and Controls. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | UV | Disinfection | Feb 05, 2020

Selecting the UV LED Wavelength for Purification Applications

Patrick Durand is the Worldwide Technical Director at Future Lighting Solutions (FLS) with over 15 years of experience in the solid state lighting industry. Patrick leads the FLS Technical Marketing teams and FLS laboratory teams located in multiple regions around the world with the objective of providing world-class support to lighting OEMs in developing luminaires with the latest SSL technology from the light source to the complete system incorporating the LED driver, optic, thermal management and intelligent control solutions. Read more »

Environment | Commentary | Resources | Health + Environment | Dec 16, 2019

Care, Caution & Awareness Are Needed When Using LED Lights

Kyra Xavia is a researcher, educator and investigative journalist based in New Zealand. Her roles as general secretary of the Light and Lighting Research Consortium (LLRC), delegate for the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), New Zealand Ambassador for Women in Lighting 2019, and co-leader of the Dunedin Dark Skies Group, involve educating decision-makers and the public about the importance of responsible lighting, nocturnal placemaking and the value of darkness. Recognised in New Zealand and abroad for her advocacy in these matters, Kyra has co-authored research papers and published articles specific to this subject. Kyra has recently been awarded with The Dark Sky Defender Award. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Quality | Nov 15, 2019

Commentary: Providing Better Light Should Still be the Focus of the SSL Industry

J. Norman Bardsley, PhD - As President of Bardsley Consulting, Norman advises industry, government and academia on solid-state lighting, flat panel displays and energy efficiency, with special emphasis on diffuse lighting and organic electronics. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Aug 13, 2019

What the Heck Is Future Proof?

Commentary from LpR 72: The first time the question about future proofing LED systems came up seriously, was at LightFair 2018 when Siegfried Luger interviewed Patrick Durand. Since then, it has been the buzzword throughout the industry. Discussions concerning future proofing are often limited to wireless communications, IoT and some type of AI. But isn't there more? Read more »

Resources | Commentary | May 16, 2019

Well-Being, Light and Exhibition Lighting

Commentary from LpR 71: Well-being is the state of feeling healthy and happy, a good or satisfactory condition of existence, including the emotional and psychological sphere. In 1810, Goethe published a theory based on a human-based approach, combining visual appearance with harmony, culture, sensations and psychology. His color wheel was entitled "allegorical, symbolic, mystic use of color" and was composed of six hues, i.e. red (the beautiful), orange (the noble), yellow (the good), green (the useful), blue (the common) and violet (the unnecessary). The position on the wheel was harmonically relevant and in particular the colors in opposite position generated a strong psychological contrast and were called "opposite colors". Primary colors were yellow, blue and red, and the opposites were green, violet and orange, respectively. Goethe's wheel and the particular matching of opposites soon became popular and was used by the Impressionism movement, especially by Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. In this artistic movement, the special impact given by the combination of opposite colors were deliberately aimed to create special psychological effects and sensations. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Mar 25, 2019

An Industry at a Crossroads

Commentary from LpR 70: We often hear grumbles about the lighting industry suffering under low margins and high costs. Primarily, this is true for most traditional luminaire manufacturers but not as much for innovative controls and driver manufacturers, and even less so for innovative newcomers who understand the semiconductor business that has taken over a share of the luminaire manufacturers' revenue. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Dec 12, 2018

A New Lighting Scene

Commentary from LpR 69: I wouldn’t be telling you anything new if I said that technology is changing at an ever-increasing rate. But in the lighting industry there is a lot more happening, which makes these times truly disruptive and perhaps even inconvenient for some people ... but not for me. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Oct 19, 2018

UV-Light for Plant Development

Commentary from LpR 68: Since the development of the incandescent lamp, greenhouse farmers have been using electric light sources as a supplement to natural sunlight. Initially, light intensity was the major concern. Later, growers learned to manipulate plant development by altering the power distribution of the light spectrum for added value such as taste and appearance. Read more »

Blue Light Hazard - How Dangerous Is SSL Lighting?

Modern Solid State Lighting (SSL) technology has long since found its way into our normal working and living environments. In the early phases, consumers were most concerned with lifetime, pricing and light quality of the new LED-based light sources. Now they have become almost ubiquitous, a focus has been placed on safety. At the recent Light+Building exhibition topics such as photobiological safety and blue light hazard (BLH) were highly ranked among both visitors and exhibitors. Read more »

Smart Lighting | Commentary | Apr 15, 2018

On Smart Luminaires

In the time up to 2010, conventional luminaires with low or high-pressure discharge lamps with a luminous efficacy of about 80 lm/W were developed. The electrical power was dependent on the electrical power of the lamps built in the luminaire. From 2008 and likely until around 2020, luminaires with phosphorconverted white LEDs with one fixed color temperature, a constant luminous intensity distribution and a maximal luminous efficacy of about 140-160 lm/W are developed with an electrical power between 10 W and 300 W for different applications and dependent on the manufacturer. Therefore, a relative increase in luminous efficacy of 80 -100% in the context of the discussions on “energy efficiency” is being achieved. Read more »

Resources | LpR Article | Commentary | Trends | Jan 15, 2018

Can You Show Me the Next S-Curve, Please?

The evolution of technologies is often described using the “S-curve” model. In the early stage, in the first phase of its life cycle, technology is mainly driven by fundamental research. Only a few players are active at that time and innovation steps are quite large. In the second phase, early adopters start to develop products and bring them to market. This phase is characterized by huge investments. In the third phase, more and more players enter the technology field, competition becomes important and development speed of the technology decreases. In the last phase, the technology is mature, (nearly) everybody can use it, there are fewer margins and the technology should be replaced by a new one. Many of the SSL technologies have meanwhile reached maturity. Where are the upcoming technologies, what will be the next S-curve? Looking at technology discussions and lectures at LpS 2017 I tried to find answers to these questions. Read more »

Resources | LpR Article | Commentary | Test Equipment | Oct 31, 2017

The Value of High-End Labs for High Quality Lighting

With the relocation to the Augsburg site in 2015, the Osram laboratory equipment includes a number of integrating spheres of different sizes up to 3 meters in diameter, several goniophotometers A/B/C types, a rotary mirror light distribution meter and a hemispherical goniometer with a measurement radius of 2.65 meters, optical bench measuring systems with up to 35 meter measuring distance, corresponding high-quality photometric receivers and spectral radiometers as well as the necessary components for the electrical operation of lamps - according to customer or standardized specifications. Read more »

Brave New World and the Dualism of Light(ing)

The lighting business has been quite predictable over a long period of time. Technical changes were introduced slowly, dominated by a handful of leading companies, and mostly due to new, but not disruptive light sources. The life of engineers was mainly determined by a manageable number of parameters: Lighting requirements, light source parameters, costs, product dimensions, and the odd, required feature. Read more »

Lighting Delivering Increased Value To Society - A Strategy For Growth

In recent years we have seen energy efficiency as the key driver for regulation as well as growth. Thanks to the arrival of LEDs the industry is already providing energy savings greater than any other sector. As the LED revolution rapidly continues, where next for the EU lighting industry? LightingEurope, the European industry association for the lighting industry has developed a strategy for growth which aims to fundamentally deliver value to society while aligning with the need to move towards a circular economy. Read more »

A Lighting Designers Relativity of Light Performance

The LED will always be the superstar of light sources. Their precise and clear lighting possibilities have been targeted by lighting planners and architects for the past ten years. The coming years will see the performance of the LED getting progressively closer to the spectrum of daylight and that will, in turn, generate biologically effective LEDs that are even higher in contrast and promise a new kind of feel-good light. Read more »

From Component to System, Andreas Weisl, CEO at Seoul Semiconductor Europe GmbH

The history of Light-Emitting Diodes (LED) is quite short compared with some other electronic device industries. However, it has changed and revolutionized the entire world of light within a very short period of time. The history of Light-Emitting Diodes (LED) is quite short compared with some other electronic device industries. However, it has changed and revolutionized the entire world of light within a very short period of time. Read more »

Commentary | Smart Lighting + IoT | Resources | LpR Article | Jan 26, 2017

Lighting Up Smart Cities, Dr. Wu Chou, Huawei

Although streetlights have been associated with cities for more than a thousand years, they are rarely considered for functions other than luminary purposes. One of the distinct features of streetlights is their geographic location. In particular, streetlights follow the roads and streets that are the arteries of the city, and at night they outline the city so it can be seen from many miles away. Read more »

Commentary | Interview | Nov 24, 2016

Review of the LED Lighting Design Approach

A rapidly changing world leaves little time to react to new trends. Nokia lost its lead position because it failed to recognize market changes and take appropriate action in time. This has caused anxious industries to react quickly when changes come about. But, in some cases, such hasty reactions can also be harmful. Read more »

Event News | Commentary | Oct 03, 2016

LpS 2016 - Product Launches - Latest Technology Trends

The sixth LED professional Symposium +Expo opened its doors on September 20th, in Bregenz, Austria. Exciting product launches were presented in the exhibition and at the international press conference at the LpS 2016. Among the presenting companies were: Auer Lighting, Dow Corning, Flip Chip Opto, Gigahertz-Optik, iLumTech, Ophir Photonics, Plessey and UL. Read more »

Commentary | Interview | Sep 02, 2016

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

We sit as lighting designers in our offices and look at beautiful pictures of beautiful lighting scenarios in beautiful glossy magazines. We are inspired by possibilities that new lighting technologies can offer us and allow ourselves to dream of the beautiful projects to come. Read more »

Commentary | Aug 10, 2016

Lifetime and Reliability by Günther Sejkora

Although questions regarding lifetime and reliability of Solid-State-Lighting (SSL) products are essential for customers, knowledge about it is still fragmentary. It was easy to give answers to these questions in the times of conventional lamps (incandescent, fluorescent, high pressure): light output degraded over time and end of life was reached when light output fell below a certain level or when the lamp “burned out”. Read more »

Commentary | May 19, 2016

LFI 2016 Touts LED Lighting and Digital Control Technology Transformation by Dr. Nisa Khan

The 27th Annual LightFair International (LFI) conference was dominated by LED lighting coupled with internet-based control via wireless networks that continues to proliferate in today’s world. The world is increasingly becoming drenched with Internet of Things (IoT) discussions, demonstrations and for some, a certain level of implementation. Electric lighting transformed our society for over 100 years, boosting our mood and association with the environment, culture, productivity, and economic conditions. Such enormity pales in comparison to an unprecedented revolution that LFI describes as “Light and Technology in a New Language!” Read more »

Commentary | Apr 19, 2016

Zhaga Meets Smart Lighting by Dee Denteneer

At first glance, the standardization of LED lighting components seems to be quite remote from the rise of smart, connected lighting and the Internet of Things (IoT). But the projected growth in penetration of smart lighting can only be realized through developments in high-volume electronics and standardization. Such standardization is intended to remove arbitrary variations in components, making design and implementation easier for manufacturers of smart LED luminaires, and enabling a supplier ecosystem. This is where Zhaga comes in. Read more »

Commentary | Feb 15, 2016

Design Beyond Traditional Form Follows Function

Today design is omnipresent. But what is design? “Design” was first coined by the American architect, Louis Sullivan, to mean that the style of architecture should reflect its purpose; applicable for buildings and constructions and later on attributable to products and objects. Read more »