Designing any site requires precision and wide subject knowledge, without it you will almost definitely experience poor quality lighting, glare, overspill and inadequate uniformity. The Kingfisher Team share some top tips on best practice. 

As the foundation of any project, lighting design can make or break the entire development. It determines the correct illumination required to meet all relevant standards, regulations and legislation. Without efficient planning and calculations, you are risking not only over or under illuminating your site but also breaking light pollution laws resulting in fines and prosecutions. Below you’ll find some of our tips to excellent and efficient design.

Calculations

You need to make sure you are using appropriate and up-to-date software. The Kingfisher Lighting Design Team use the latest version of AGI because it is one of the most accurate calculation tools on the market. It helps calculate the amount of light within a set environment also accounting for incident and reflected light. Therefore as a result any skyglow, overspill and other forms of nuisance light will be minimised.

Optic Selection

A key way of ensuring your site achieves the perfect distribution would be through meticulous optic selection. Our product range features many different luminaires with many optic options to choose from; this ensures your light source extends to exactly where needed without compromising on quality. This is where competent designers and software are essential to produce the best results.

                                                      

Colour Temperature

Measured on the Kelvin Scale, colour temperature determines how warm or cool a light source appears within your area. Different temperatures work better in particular areas for example stone based areas work better with 4000K - 5700K and red brick works better with 2200K, 2700K and 3000K.

However, colour temperature is more than just aesthetics as the artificial light has a greater significant affect on both humans and animals alike. Mammals such as bats are particularly affected as they perceive cooler temperatures as daylight which disrupts their lifecycle and their ability to reproduce.

Your area matters! The Kingfisher Team are experts many different areas including residential and animal habitats, so they’ll produce a design best suited for the area and its environmental zone and requirements.

Upgrading to LED

September 2021 has brought us the ban of Halogen lamps and therefore many sites will be seeking a suitable alternative. Many companies will present a ‘one size fits all’ solution comparing wattages instead of luminaire distributions and optics. It is a lot harder than it looks because people always tend to go for what seems to be the cheaper options however, cheaper isn’t always better!

An example would be a car dealership needed a redesign to upgrade their scheme and chose a small low wattage flood light thinking believing would be suitable. The design determined they would need to use many of the small floods in comparison to using a large flood with a greater distribution. The redesign using the larger floods was much cheaper in the long run and offers better results on the Colour Rendering Index.

Kingfisher Lighting have got you covered no matter the size of your scheme. We have a group of fully qualified designers who work with state-of-the-art equipment in order to produce outstanding results for your development. As active members of the ILP and the LIA so we get the most up-to-date information to ensure your designs meet all necessary criteria including British Standards.

We’ve created many lighting designs for award winning developments across the UK including Elephant and Castle, Gabriel Square, Jedburgh Intergenerational Community Campus and Central Square, Leeds. Our talented Design Team have witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly and strive for excellence within every scheme they produce.

Contact our team today to see what we can do for you.

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