Are we responsible to the originals when we develop products for our museum stores?

“Turning High art into cheap products” writes Peter Aspden. June 2012. The Financial Times

In The Financial Times on Saturday June 23^rd, Peter Aspden wrote a powerful critique about the relationship between the value of art and the devaluation thereof in “art-related products”.  Quoting Francis Bacon “ The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery” Aspden follows on “Who will now believe the words of Bacon when they can be read on a blue-and-beige €320 cashmere throw?”

In my dealings with museum shops over some twenty years, every buyer has declared earnest responsibility to the aims and values of the museums which they represent. And yet, having spent the last three months visiting around twenty museum stores in the UK and Washington, Philadelphia and New York, I fear that many of these stores do actually fail in these aspirations in their product selection. They actually ridicule the original work, in many cases, through cheap product quality and woefully poor repro accuracy.

Ten years ago, one could always look to the US for best practice in museum store product selection, but today, from the sites which I visited, that claim cannot be justified. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, surely the original and best, now disappoints as a retail experience. An excellent selection of books, and textiles both inspire and inform but the gift products are pedestrian and some are downright inappropriate. How can you claim to respect the art and understand the power of art to inspire when you simply plonk an image on a 2 x 3” plastic luggage tag or cut a great hole in the image and print it on an incomprehensible product called an “Eyelight”? The great Philadelphia Museum of Art has a shop team which has decided that their paintings are best redefined on lenticular plastic postcards and fridge magnet sets. Perhaps most heinously the Foulger Library offers an astoundingly cheap black plastic box with a little photograph of the First Folio frontispiece  stuck on the lid. In a number of different sites a charming collection of product related to a single image make a retail “story”.  In most cases the discrepancy of repro quality invalidates the display. Is it not the buyer’s job to know that different materials take print in a differing way ? And one print will differ from another print from a different supplier. On precious few products is there any information about the artists and the collection. Perhaps that is a relief.

The great digital revolution and print on demand solutions now all provide a myriad of products with your chosen image. The Bridgeman Art Library boasts over 100,000 images and allows you to see your selected image on any number of products. Now you can go on line and model the picture you want to see on a mug, bag or placemat. Does that mug come with a certificate which explains who is the artist, where is the picture hanging and advises how close the colour of the print on the mug is to the original?

Aspden presents such as the “consumer’s banal checklist of trinkets” and such museums can certainly justify their product selection on the grounds of income and profitability. But let us aspire to a better thing. Can we not work towards better stores which inspire, inform and stimulate as well as generating great income for their museum?  Can we respect what Aspden defines as the “artist’s yearning for transcendence” in merchandise which is sufficiently appealing to fill the museum shop coffers?  To my mind we can at least try and the solutions are three fold:  1) designing or supplying products of genuine originality - themselves achieving transcendence through material and aesthetic satisfaction. Of course this will be a struggle and open to individual taste/prejudice but some “art-related products” are actually original pieces. Donald Stein’s legendary “History of Art” T-shirt, Rob Fishbone’s  inflatable “Scream” or Cary Bryant’s inspired “Dress up David” magnet set are all exceptional original ideas inspired by art. 2) Products inspired by the works in the collection - Vivienne Westwood and Gianni Versace following the manner of the original master, Piero Fornasetti, create original works using pattern and decoration from history. 3) yes - creating souvenirs from your artworks with care. A 2” x 3” fridge magnet or even a 4” x 6” postcard of an enormous historical narrative is absurd, but a 2” x 3” image of a vase/jug with sunflowers or a portrait works a treat. Why? because the scale and detail can tell the truth of the work accurately. If the historical narrative is the most popular image in the collection, select details for your pick up lines or develop products which allow you to project the scale responsibly. The National Portrait Gallery in London boasts a range of standard fridge magnets simply with a quote in a standard typeface on a plain seemingly irrelevant coloured background. The NGA in Washington offers quotes on a much more interestingly shaped magnet with a portrait of the quote-sayer. A much more imaginative solution for a “portrait” gallery and in this case, ironically, from the same magnet manufacturer.

As a museum there is a demand to inform as well as inspire. To that end is it not incumbent upon the museum to see each product sold as a platform for further knowledge and interest? All it needs is a few words stating title, dates and artist as well as some link to the collection and to more information about the piece. Every museum related souvenir without at least this is a wasted opportunity.

What can then be done to resolve this? The route to success here must come from the top. In many circumstances the institutions have become, frankly, lazy. It is much easier to buy in an existing supplier’s OK new product than it is to challenge them to make it a great product. In many cases the buyers pay lip service to the responsibility, but they come from the high street and are much more interested in gross margin and minimum orders rather than responsibility to the work of a great artist. There needs to be a common presentation protocol on all products driven by the ambition to say as much as possible about the work, the artists and the institution. There needs to be one agreed scan for every picture with a match print against which every subsequent print must be measured. The buyer needs to be driven to deliver the appropriate gross margin and commercial imperative but know about the work, their responsibilities to their collection and to the artists therein who strived to reach such expression and who “yearned for transcendence” . It can be done. More visitors will leave with better products which can inspire and inform all who subsequently come across them, and in doing so the museum coffers will grow ever more full.

Ian Peter MacDonald  - July 2012

LED Lighting in Art Galleries and Museums

At last a lighting technology has arrived which can genuinely do it all. Yes it can save all those maintenance hours changing light bulbs, it uses less than half the energy consumed by “energy saving” compact fluorescent technology and because each lighting element is a semi conductor, it can be controlled with ease. It also projects no Infra red and no Ultra Violet, the two specific elements which damage art and artefacts. What is more is that the bit that emits lights is also very, very small. Having said all that this technology is very, very new.

An art gallery really needs lights that do not need changing - often the light sources are very high and require at least two people, and often scaffolding to change one light. They are obliged by law to show their energy consumption and are therefore keen to reduce that energy bill. They have a range of items in their collection - some of which would show to best effect in a warm light, others in a cooler light, all needing to be as near to daylight in colour accuracy to project the artefacts to best effect. Most importantly all light sources damage the artwork and so much effort is made to reduce the amount of light on the actual collections - please see the British Galleries in the V&A or the Smithsonian Museum of America to witness where light levels are so poor that the much prized artefacts can be barely made out.

Recognising these enormous benefits the museum and gallery markets are piling into this new solid state - LED lighting. The energy reductions are dramatic and the lights do not fail. Furthermore there is no damage being done to the artwork. And yet to my judgement the galleries where these are installed completely fail to light the work sympathetically. The colour temperature is uniformly cold, the narrow beam angles make for a “hot” spot right in the middle of the cherished art work with much lowers light levels over the remainder of the work, and the light fittings themselves are astonishingly ugly with a series of white lights glaring.

How has this come to pass? Given that the technology can deliver all the stated benefits and that the payback certainly justifies the investment, why is it that so many sites have bought into compromised solutions?  The answer seems to be that the savings benefit is what has driven the change and not the aesthetic demands nor a complete understanding of what the technology can offer. It is considerably easier for a Building Services team to turn to their old supplier of art lighting and ask them for LED art lighting than it is for them to really learn up on the technology and understand how to assess what the technology can deliver and who can deliver it. The real experts on this technology are not the great brand names of historic lighting but electronics specialists dotted around the country - yes the UK has some of the very best thinking and expertise in the world.

The answer must be for the curatorial teams and building services teams to engage with the thinking of the technology experts. Both parties can then truly understand what each needs and what each can offer. Once each understands the other, clear specifications can be drawn up which determine the criteria required. Only then should we be commissioning LED lighting which genuinely suits the extraordinary collections we enjoy and the artworks they hold.

Ian Peter MacDonald, Norwich, June 2012

Lighting your factory with LED - take care to get a great result

“A no-brainer” stated the Finance Director, delighted at his return on investment as he installs new lights that use 66% less energy and require no maintenance for a promised 10 years. “ And it reduces our CRC charge, shows how green we are and the lighting cost will be relatively stable over the next ten years “. Enthusiastic LED lighting salesman is delighted. At £350 each, this is a valuable sale.

Two months earlier he had been approached by an independent consultant who had told him lots about LEDs – and had recommended an English manufacturer of LED lighting for his factory. Delighted, the Finance Director had ordered 20 units of the English lights every month.

But the Enthusiastic LED lighting salesman had shown him a new light that was £150 cheaper and appeared to do the same job. The Financial Director cancelled the order with the English manufacturer and asked Enthusiastic LED salesman to supply 20 units of the new, cheaper Chinese lights every month.

A month after these new lights had been installed the English manufacturer received a call. “These new lights appeared every bit as bright as yours, but six of the initial 20 have already failed and they are already less bright than they were when installed. I have taken them all out and we are fighting with the supplier over the credit now due. Please can we get back to our original deal.”

This true story illustrates the challenges in selecting the right LED light for your task. Typically a customer will respond positively to the initial approach to reduce the energy consumption with LED. The promise of savings is so attractive and the manufacturer’s presentation so effective it is difficult to see what could possibly go wrong.

The truth is that LED is a largely unregulated technology. The lighting design community is highly cynical of the claims made by even the most familiar household names, who peddle the phrase “equivalent to 50W” without any qualification of that statement and many major companies are regretting their rush to adopt a technology which leaves them with half the light they had before, despite a significant investment.

Now the Finance Director is delighted. He has found the right light to last for 10 years. But he found out that choosing the right LED lighting is complex. The key steps were not only to establish how much light they needed, how much energy would be required to supply that light efficiently (because he thought he’d understood that bit), but also to really understand how long the lights would remain at full brightness. Once these issues have been defined, the key questions are: (1) can the manufacturer/supplier be trusted to supply accurate data and (2) what would happen if anything goes wrong ?

84 x £350 is a lot of money to throw away if the supplier will not support you. Spending 84 x £500 is well worth it if you have a payback in less than two years and you can actually drive to the English factory if problems do arise as far as 7 years out.

LED provides the right light for the long term BUT choose with care.

Ian Peter MacDonald - MacDonald Tait Light - info@macdonaldtait.com- 01603 788448

Missing data = Obfuscation ?

As a young pigtailed ‘un I had a pretty clear understanding that physics and chemistry were all about real true things. Things that could be measured, monitored and tested. Certainly science lessons with Mrs Barry and Mrs Brandt didn’t allow for much creative interpretation. Turns out that there are many ways to be creative with measuring, monitoring and testing. And one of the easiest ways is by simply not including data.

My train of thought was sharpened by a recent editorial in the BMJ “Missing Clinical Trial Data” (BMJ 2012; 344: d8158). It appears some drug trials are overlooked, especially where the results don’t entirely show the latest groovy drug in best light. Unpublished evidence; an absence of data; failure to ensure proper regulation and registration of clinical trials – a catalogue of bad science to make Mrs Barry quite upset.

In LED lighting the outcome of trial and tests may not be as life threatening – but the consequences of not having clear regulation, consistency of product specification and obfuscation leads to very muddy waters.

Let’s try beam angle, for example.  Quite often manufacturers advertise the lumen output for a range of lights without clearly indicating that they are referring to the lumen output from the model with the narrowest beam. Wider beam – lower lux at 2m compared to a more narrow beam can all too often be the unstated case. Another popular confusion is created by describing light output in lumens for some products and candelas for others.  While there may well be historic reasons for this, it doesn’t help the customer.

And, while I’m on a roll, there’s another couple of areas rich in obfuscation. First up is lumen output and delivered lumens. Even in the Old Testament they didn’t condone hiding lights under bushels – and still most specifications don’t differentiate between lumen output from the light unit and lumens delivered. Finally there’s energy consumption. I anticipate that this is an area that we will be coming back to again in the future. LED power consumption is so very much less than traditional lighting that people don’t yet much question the amount of energy used for the light engine, or the entire system Wattage.

For professional specifiers and designers this stuff is old hat – and questions keep being asked of the manufacturers until the “apples and pears” conundrum as described by CELMA is untangled.

However, if LED technology is genuinely to be embraced by all the different kinds of people that buy lamps we need to be doing better than this.

Perhaps the industry could learn something from the wine producers and merchants. Over the years they have developed clear labelling regulations.  It is compulsory for each bottle to clearly show country and appellation of origin, bottle and alcohol content, name and address of producer/brand owner. Optionally you could mention the grape variety. People like wine and, over and beyond the whole wine snob thing, they know what they are getting and what it is worth.

Less high – faluting as an example might be Ronseal – “IT DOES WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN”. That’s what lighting packaging should deliver – if we can all just agree on what the criteria should be....

Looking into 2012...

What  can we expect in 2012 ? Looking deep into our crystal ball we see several developments both in how the customer responds to the technology and how the technology itself advances.

1)       The market/consumer will become more discerning as they hear more horror stories and yet witness good new projects. The efforts of the Lighting Association to police supplier’s data should soon begin to make an impact.

2)       Customers commissioning new buildings will demand LED lighting as they see good examples.

3)        The costs will not go down in 2012, but lower cost products will come into the market. These should be judged with care and we must rely on third party test data and not that from the manufacturers.

4)       The introduction of advanced technologies such as Chromawhite from Photonstar will show the way to a completely new LED solution. These chips can be tuned to colour temperature and will automatically adjust colour temperature and output as the product ages. These will offer unprecedented stability over the long term.

5)       The range of tasks which can be covered well by LED will continue to develop. Today we can happily replace all low and Hi-bay with LED as well as all standard downlight tasks in home, office, restaurant and shop. By the end of 2012, we shall be replacing 600 x 600 layins as standard.

6)       Many of the best LED manufacturers in the world come from the UK. Buying effective LEDs will not only enhance your project but will reduce the carbon impact of supplying lighting and will continue to create new jobs in Britain.

Leisure Centre LED conundrum

Here’s a conundrum from a leisure centre near us in Norfolk. Really keen to be green, they first approached us in September 2010. All the key areas, such as the gym, reception area, corridors, gift shop and restaurant were lit with halogen dichroics – about 67 in total. After an audit of existing lights we came up with an LED scenario which would see their energy consumption reduced from approximately 6,293kWh pa to around 1,197kWh pa simply replacing these dichroics. A pretty decent energy reduction of over 80%.  This was achieved using mostly 7W LED downlights. And at that stage the capital investment, in lights alone, would have been about £2,400 – excluding installation costs.  Last year the management team were keen to retrofit with the LEDs, but simply didn’t have enough cash stashed away to do it.

Given the challenges of the current economic climate a cautious approach is quite understandable. The leisure team also anticipated that, following the usual pattern of fast moving technologies, LEDs would become cheaper. But, a year on from the original decision new features have become apparent.

Out of the potential variables of energy use (W’s), light output (lm’s) and unit cost (£’s) neither W’s nor £’s have actually changed much – the developments have been in light output. You get more bangs for your buck than you did a year ago. If you require a defined light output and supported longevity, the units themselves are not likely to come down in price until the component prices and production processes evolve.  

One might argue that the gamble taken by the leisure team simply hasn’t paid off: had they made the change back in September 2010 it might have taken 3 years to get to the point where the original investment had been paid back. It will still take 3 years, but they have now spent a whole year with energy costs much higher than they need be. Had they taken a bank loan (if they could get one!) at current interest rates it might have taken them a little over 3 years – but not that much. Given the cost issues it is unlikely that product prices will reduce dramatically in the next year, but electricity costs will continue to climb...

So, the conundrum is: when is the optimum moment for them to make the change?

A cautionary tale from LED land

Once upon a time there was a young property investor who decided to build a hotel. His hotel was in a busy, business area near London. He wanted it to be very fine and worked with a big hotel chain to design it to meet all their standards. But he wanted more than that; he wanted his hotel to use LED lighting technology. He loved the idea of low energy bills and he envisioned some really 21^st century lighting effects in his new hotel. But he knew it was a complicated thing to do – and he respected the challenges new technologies could bring – so he found a special wizard (LED consultant) and shared his idea.

“We can do this, and we can do it well” said his wizard, “here is a design, and a plan and list of exactly the right lights to achieve your dream”.

“Fabulous”, said the young man, “let me show it to the project management company”.

So the project management company looked at the plans and said “We need more: more graphs, and more pictures and more meetings”.

They had more meetings and looked at CAD models of the lights and talked about dimming protocols. And then one day, co-incidentally, they went bust and vanished.

The young man found another project management company. He introduced his LED wizard to them and showed them the design and the plan and the specifications.

“Oooh!” said the new company, sucking their teeth, “we need even more details and meetings and designs.” Which the wizard and the young man very politely provided.

And  then everything went silent.

The LED wizard was worried. The young man’s dream for his lights was not going to be realised in time if they didn’t order the lights before the building was finished. So he rang and emailed the new project management company.

Then one day the new project managers said “Look how clever we are: we have found lights just like the ones you told us about – but they cost much, much less”.

“Are they really the same?” said the wizard – “I’d like to see them.”

But the man who had made the new lights got very angry “ARE YOU CALLING MY LIGHTS RUBBISH?” he shouted, “MY LAWYERS WILL BE CALLING YOU.”

The LED consultant was a brave soul and gently suggested that the young man, the project managers, the designer, the new light supplier and anyone else interested should all get together and turn on the lights to see what they were actually like.

So everyone met in the half-built hotel and they turned on the lights: they looked at the new lights and they looked at the lights originally specified. There was silence.

The project management people said “Wow! We didn’t realise that despite having the same wattage and lumen output the difference between two LEDs could be so big. The beam angle is different, the colour is different, the light temperature is different, the fall of light on the floor is different and they have different life expectations.”

“ARE YOU CALLING MY LIGHTS RUBBISH?” shouted the angry man who had made the new lights.”MY LAWYERS WILL BE CALLING YOU”.

“Well, no,” said everyone, “but we can all see that they will not deliver the design as specified and don’t even offer a close compromise. The young man – who ultimately pays for all of this – will not be getting what he wanted.”

And between each other they wrote many emails blaming and shaming and worrying because they had already ordered masses of the wrong lights.

In other stories someone would appear now with a wand, or a horse or, even a princess – but in our story we still don’t know whether the dimming protocol will work with the LEDs chosen in error – let alone if the young man will get to have his vision realised... another chapter to follow...

LEDs – anticipating the pitfalls and identifying the risks

LED lighting remains unregulated “Wild West” technology with great potential but some enormous risks.

These were poor quality LED’s that had to be taken out of a misguided hotel recently. This is one of three boxes!

Risks:

·         Buying LEDs that fail

·         Buying LEDs from specs and not witnessing the light

·         or change colour after a little use,

·         or start failing because the dimmers are neither compatible or dim

·         or the replacements are not be the same as the original batch

·         or that don’t do what the designer specified

·         or that don’t send out the right colour of light

You cannot send them back because you do not “like” them and expect a refund.

The failure of a light to deliver to the specification may also not be immediately apparent unless every detail is investigated.

This designer specified downlights with a medium beam and lumen output of 600 Lm. The contractor went for a cheaper model which purported to have the same lumen output and beam angle. Unfortunately this was being delivered at the expense of the beam angle (which was much narrower than claimed) The result is this patchy, mottled effect on the floor – not what the designer or client wants to see at all.

How then to avoid the pitfalls?

·         Start with a lighting design that suits the technology.

·         Model the lighting levels to illustrate where the light will go and how good is the light throw

·         Specify lights that you trust will deliver the light for a guaranteed period

·         Ensure trace-ability in the event of failure

·         Establish what are the options at end of life

·         Check that every component of the light will deliver every aspect of the design to the required level. Where you are considering between two apparently identical lights TURN THEM ON and then see how they perform.

If you do not have access to this expertise, use an expert LED specifier and also use an LED experienced electrician. Many claim experience in this technology, few genuinely grasp the issues. Any investment in LED involves a great deal of money. Take care.

Buy the right effective LEDs and you have great lighting for a generation using a fraction of historic energy.

Ian Peter MacDonald  -                MacDonald Tait Light -                November 2011 -  ianpeter@macdonaldtait.com

Select LED lighting

When Edison approached his customers with the first lightbulb, did they go to their existing candle and gas fitting suppliers to ask them how to judge that bulb ?

LED lighting is the current buzzword for an easy route to reducing energy. Simply change your light bulb and you will save energy. The mantra is commonly accepted and household, builders and commercial enterprises are all rushing to make that change.

And yet this is completely unregulated technology. How do the consumers know what to buy ? The product claims “equivalent to 50W halogen downlight, lasts for 50,000 hours, guaranteed for 5 years”.  Let us examine these claims:

1)      Equivalent to 50W halogen. In what respects ? It may mean that the fitting suits your existing 50W fitting. Does it mean that the light output is the same ? Light output is  defined in lumens and a 50W halogen light generates over 800 Lumens. There is not one single LED lamp which generates 800 Lumens. Does it mean that it is a familiar warm light which dims to a satisfying orange glow ? A 50W halogen has a colour temperature of around 2600Kelvin which warms up to around 2200K at a low dim level. No LED lamp on the market today can emulate this. There are LED lights which can achieve a genuine equivalence to a 50W halogen but they are specialist products.

2)      Lasts for 50,000 hours. An LED can last for 50,000 hours - ie around 8 years with the lights on all of the time, but how much light is generated at 50,000 hours and what colour is it ? Unless you know exactly the testing conditions and the anticipated Lumen output reduction rate, unless you understand the heat dissipation mechanism and the anticipated catastrophic  failure rate your LED lights will be a range of different colours and really rather dull in 50,000 hours.

3)      Guaranteed for 5 years.(Some manufacturers claim 10 years). Guaranteed to do what in ten years ? Yes they will probably be on, but how do you assess what is too dark or what colour shift is covered ? What will the manufacturer do when you call up and claim new fittings ? Even if they do replace them, how do you guarantee they are the same colour temperature, the same LED bin, the same light output and even the same bezel colour as the original. After all, replacing one will look rather odd against all the others unless you really have that answer.

The truth is that as in any ground changing technology there is a desperate fight as the established lighting suppliers, who have made their billions exploiting a technology created over a century ago, jostle with the young hi tech engineering  turks who really understand the technology, who push the envelope and who are genuinely offering a brighter, better world of light. We, the modest consumers are merely pawns in this battle.

This leaves the professionals in a bit of a jam. A builder or electrician is obliged to provide Part L2 compliant LED lighting. Supply inadequate LED lights and you get an unhappy customer, or the compliance officer will reject them and new lights will have to be sourced. Architects are constantly swamped with handsome brochures showing handsome LED light fittings. They cost a fortune, yet how does that architect judge how much light, what colour they will be and what dimming system will work, as well as the issues of longevity and colour maintenance.

The light output from every single LED manufacturer is different. How do you know if that light will provide the light you need ?

So, if good LED lights do exist, where do you get them ? The answer is to employ a specialist lighting designer who will layout the lighting and define the exact LED light for that job. The responsibility is then on them to support the claims with proven tested criteria and to manage the guarantee. They can model the light levels and show you exactly what light you will get before you make any purchase. Yes there will be a slight cost - a lighting designer will cost around £400 a day, but that is small beer relative to choosing the wrong LED lights.

Ian Peter MacDonald - MacDonald Tait Light - ianpeter@macdonaldtait.com - 24^th October 2011

Lighting in Museums

In a recent article in the Museum Journal, much reflection was given on the process of changing from the historic tungsten to the LED lighting future. Wisely the article concluded that the museum should proceed with caution. Stephen Cannon-Brookes made the traditional observation that CRI is the key and that traditional lighting therefore satisfies this demand. Certainly high CRI is often desirable but many collections will have different colour temperature depending on the nature of the piece which they are lighting. Certainly in my own dealing s with the National Portrait Gallery they have actually looked for warmer colour temperature in the Victorian rooms and a cooler colour temperature in the contemporary galleries. Stephen is correct today but the CRI accuracy is improving daily with the best LED manufacturers and this will be an issue resolved within two to three years.

LED lighting is a technology ideal for lighting artefact and art, but not only because the temperatures are lower and the energy consumption is so much less. The real benefits are in the controllability which this technology affords. The world now exists in which each light can respond to the natural light levels and adjust output levels accordingly. Now that same light can be tuned to the specific colour demands of the bright contemporary  Marc Quinn piece in a NPG exhibition to the warm tones of a Leighton masterpiece in the subsequent exhibition in the same room. Finally each light can respond to occupancy in the room thus further saving energy. The manufacturers who have developed such flexibility have not yet approached the museum and gallery market, but it does make sense to bring these benefits to a market which so evidently can use them.

And finally the bugbear of the multi chip light source. Despite hours of design commitment from celebrated designers, I struggle to like the look of the large LED lights employed by museums in their large exhibition spaces.  The aesthetic is boxy and the rows of lights may suit Lords and Wembley but not the reflective pantheons of art.

Stephen Cannon-Brookes goes onto observe quite rightly that manufacturers make claims on efficiencies that do not include the system consumption. This lack of certainty even from highly respected familiar names in lighting makes selecting such expensive light sources very difficult. But the future is brightening. The Lighting Industry Federation working with the Lighting Association have drawn up a very useful “Guidelines to specifying LEDs” which at least gives the specifier the questions to ask of the manufacturer and the Lighting Association are drawing up a verification Tick logo which then gives third party authentication to the claims.

So do tread warily, but demand that the manufacturers address these issues. The technology allows it, the manufacturers just need to know there is demand. The consequence will be brighter collections, cooler, more comfortable galleries and much lower energy and maintenance bills.  Health warning - because of this longevity, these manufacturers are only going to get one bite at the cherry and are pushing for immediate adoption….. 

Ian Peter MacDonald is an LED lighting specialist with 25 years   particular experience in Museums

Biting the LED bullet

Enjoyed an amazing evening the Claxton Opera (performing Der Freischutz most excellently) and got chatting to a chat in property management. They had just moved into new offices and he was explaining how excited he had been to be somewhere with insulation, groovy lights, and,he hoped, reduced energy bills. To his horror the most recent bill had come in way in excess of the previous monthly bills. No real surprise: improved insulation coupled with halogen downlights meant that his air conditioning costs had gone up. I mentioned LED (no hard sell, we were at the opera) and he agreed he could see the benefits. Not only could he see the benefits - it would mean he didn't have to either shimmy up onto the desks or get a man in to change each blown bulb (£50 a pop).
So the usual challenge of getting people to buy LED. They understand the value of new LED; they understand the costs of their present solution; and they can see the benefits of changing. But they just don't want to bite the bullet (ref Der Freischutz) and make the investment.
I'm going to send him a Cordata 10 (GU10 replacement) to see if it strikes the right note.

eBay time for LEDs

First toe in the eBay jungle: from time to time we have a surplus of LED stock. Could be that the customer changed their mind at the last moment; could be that the light we specified doesn’t exactly meet the requirements of the room; or could be that the fitting the customer thought they had wasn’t quite as they described it.... in any case an opportunity to use one of the biggest market places in the UK should be worth a shot.

So far I have put together our product description and pictures. The usual LED challenges exist: how to make consumers understand that not all LEDs are equal. There are sellers offering 4 GU10’s for a tenner. Some offering 10 for £22.99. They also claim to be 6W – but provide no information about the lux levels they deliver at 2m; or the real life expectancy; or the precise angle of the beam.

With such a jostle in the market – bright colours; cheap – cheap – cheap prices and random claims (one of my favourites is the site which says their lamps come from a factory where other bulbs get CE approval so theirs must be as good....even though they don’t actually have any accreditation, hummmm) I guess we are left hoping that the customer will nevertheless discover us. That doesn’t seem much of a marketing strategy, but we’ll see.

Thinking about explaining LEDs to my granny

My granny used to know exactly which light bulb to buy for each room in her house: you used 100Watt for the standard lamp in the sitting room; 40Watt for bedside table; 60Watt for corridors; and got a man in to do the fluorescent tubes in the kitchen. When you left a room you turned the lights out and sometime the lamp shade got a scorch mark where the hot bulb had burnt it. A whole other area of confusion existed because there could be two circuits in the house - the one for lamps with small round pins - and the one with big round pins - and the square pins. So, it wasn't really a simpler time, just one where there was a shared understanding that the bigger the number on the bulb the bigger the plug the brighter the light and the hotter it got if you left it on (so, remember to turn the lights off!!!).
Now, if I had to explain to my Granny which lamp she needs to read her paper I am going to have to start sharing the vocabulary of Lumens - "What Watts?", I imaging her saying, "Not Watts really", I reply, "LEDs don't need many of them to get a similar result. So if you think that your 60Watt bulb in the corridor is giving out about 800 Lumens if you used an LED bulb you would need one that used about 15Watts. "I could see to read with a 15Watt bulb... you're not talking about those energy saving bulbs are you; Mavis got some in the supermarket for 10p each. They are rubbish..." hummmm

Perfect LED versus cost dilemma in lighting Barn shop

There is a lovely farm conversion near us in North Norfolk at Wroxham. It comprises several shops, a garden centre and a cafe. It is quite rightly very popular throughout the year.
At the moment they are doing some development work - turning an old office into a food shop. We have been specifiying lights to make the most of the beamed ceiling while showing the food to best advantage. The Track Spot Aero we recommend comes in at £136 a unit: in a big space with some dozen units that makes it quite a big commitment. And on paper it can be hard to see what is so special about really good LED lighting.
We took a sample unit for the customer to see: and the wow! of great LED lighting at only 10W each certainly had a positive effect. He loved it... fingers crossed he makes the jump to better light.

Early Adaptors to LED light

Spike and Toni are our neighbours. We bumped into them on Sunday and were invited in for a drink. Spike brews his own wine using grape juice and a secret blend of herbs. They have an adult games room with pool / poker table, bar with optics , piano with candles and two cockatiels. Toni is a counsellor and Spike is a well known local musician – trombone.

Over a glass of white and some fabulous sounds (Speedometer) we chatted about our business.

“LED’s”, stated Spike, “are the light source of the future. They give out minimal heat; are re-cyclable and use much, much less energy. They are GREAT! – What to you think?”

“Well,” we replied, “you’ve just used all the best bits of our sales pitch – so not much to add really... and the wine is delicious.”

We left wishing we could pick up how to do jazz improv as simply as Spike had understood LEDs.

Job Opportunity for LED Specifier

Business is going well and so we are now looking for some one - or some company - to come and support us with specifiying and designing. As a small company I don't think we are yet in a position to offer full time employment with all the commitment that would entail, but a self-employed specifier would be perfect: some one with a range of interests and enthusiasms in the lighting world; someone with a keen attitude and good eye for detail and product developments; someone prepared to meet the customer and us in either Norfolk or London; someone who is as concerned about delivering top class customer care as we are; oh! and someone who can brew up the perfect cappucino and produce a coffee walnut cake. (I know, the last bit may be wishing for the moon.) Fingers crossed.

One Aldwych Hotel lights up the swimming pool

Congratulations to One Aldwych who have just completed a fabulous lighting design in the hotel's swimming pool area. The task was not without it's challenges - hiding the work from the keep-fit gang in the gym and scaffolding over water to mention two. The guys at B & P Services did a great job and it was worth it in the end!  The results are a clear example of the beauty that can be achieved with high quality LED - and the energy reduction will make a positive difference to the bottom line.

How to light a pub effectively with LED lights

Lighting a pub is a well trodden process. At Front of house a dimming system allows the pub to adjust the light levels to suit the ambience required for an intimate evening drink or a bright lunchtime meal with friends and colleagues. Typically this light is shed by downlights and ceiling mounted spotlights using halogen dichroic lights throwing warm, pools of light onto the table tops. Wall lights with clear incandescent 40W candles provide a stylish light source from behind elegant shades. The bar counter is lit from small downlights which provide plenty of light for the business transaction of pouring drinks and handing over the correct change. Behind the bar bright downlights keep the way clear and spotlights and downlights in tilt light fittings throw light onto the bottles showing the range of drinks on offer. Often a fluorescent tube sits out of view behind the bottle gantry throwing a light up the wall behind, silhouetting the bottles and illuminating the appealing colours of the liquid therein. The wooden boards or elegant carpet at the entrance and on the way to the lavatories are lit by downlights that are not dimmed and the lavatories themselves have either halogen downlights or large 2D CFL units providing the right light levels. These do not dim. There is no need to dim the lights in the lavatory. 

Well trodden and familiar though this is, it is a path full of headaches. The fittings break, the lightbulbs always blow, the heat from the lights burn the heads of the staff, as well as sometimes actually igniting the actual pub, the lights are of fragile glass and a danger in a food and drink dispensing environment, but most of all these lights are extremely expensive to run. Every single 50W downlight in a pub is costing at least £35 a year in energy. Add up all of the lights on the site and the lighting alone is costing around £2,000 pa in a small pub and up to £8,000 in a larger site. With electricity bills predicted to rise by 60% in the next 3 years and Government charging £12 for every Tonne of CO2 emitted, the costs of this lighting is too high.

Are new technologies the answer ?

Over the last few years two new technologies have arrived to help the pub save energy. The initial source was the “Low-energy” or compact fluorescent lamp. Projecting an unfamiliar blueish light from a bulbous or tube like lamp these lights do use much less energy but are not at all liked by the cutomer. Furthermore they contain Mercury. Sure not alot of it, but research at Stanford University illustrated that the Mercury contained in one single lamp could render 30,000 Litres of water undrinkable.

The second new light source is LED light but this source too seems to come laden with issues. The key problems are that most LEDs on the market look funny, emit not very powerful light, the colour is rather blue and they cost a lot.

Lighting is hugely important to the atmosphere of a pub, and therefore to the appeal and subsequent success of that pub. How do you retain all of the lighting qualities which you need and yet use less energy and get rid of all of these headaches ?

 The answer does lie in one of these new technologies – but you can only benefit fully from this if you think about lighting in a new way. Lighting was always breaking and you simply headed to the shop and bought a new bulb. That old bulb was thrown away and sent to landfill, hopefully not cutting anyone’s finger on the way. That old bulb was a low cost disposable consumable product from an age when the cost of electricity did not matter. To get the answer open your mind to a world in which you put in the right light once and it works consistently for ten years. To get the answer you must recognise that by spending more in 1985 to purchase your Mercedes you still have a car which works beautifully but your neighbour’s new Hillman Imp which he purchased for peanuts in 1985 died in 1989. You are beginning to see the new light. In this new world you will need to spend more money to get the right light, but that light will last and save you enormously. A pub we are currently working on spends £1700 a year on lighting. Working with us he will save £5,000 over five years. The estate has 120 sites and the investment will save well over £1.100,000 over the next ten years.

 The lighting type that will work is good LEDs. We have already observed that “most LEDs look funny, emit not very powerful light, and the colour is rather blue”. That is the case with most LEDs but good LED deliver enormous benefits without these weaknesses. Good LEDs retain their light levels for 50-80,000 hours – IE 15 years of typical use in a pub where the lights are on from 7am until 1 am. Good effective LEDs use about 1/5^th of the energy of a halogen bulb and about 1/2th of the energy of a Low energy bulb. Good LEDs have a sympathetic colour temperature which suits your required task. Good LEDs run at about 70° C. You can hold an LED lamp. Good LEDs are entirely recyclable. Good LED lights need simply be refitted at end of light. Good LEDs can amortise the carbon emitted in their manufacture and lifetime over 15-30 years.

Good LEDs can deliver all of the benefits defined here, but it is extremely difficult to find good LEDs from your existing light source. The source for the LEDs which can deliver these benefits is through an independent LED specialist whose job it is to get you the right solution which will provide these benefits for the period specified. The specialist knows where to find the answer to the specific challenges of your project and has tried and tested the solutions.

And how can we prove these extraordinary benefits are real ?

Visit the following sites and simply ask their management  - Visit the lovely Suffolk town of Woodbridge and go to the pretty Crown Hotel on the corner of the Square. Next time you are in Covent Garden visit the busy American Diner called Maxwells and simply ask for Salvo. He can show you the lighting and happily explain the benefits of working with LEDs. For a grander hotel visit Marriott’s Marble Arch hotel or the RadissonBlu hotel in Portman Square in London. If you in Scotland speak with Brian at the King’s Manor in Musselburgh or over in Western England talk with John Clifford at the 4* Blunsdon House in Swindon. These sites each champion getting good LEDs for their new lighting and are saving a great deal of money in doing so.

Finally, does it need to cost so much ?

The answer is a simple “yes” if you want good LEDs which deliver these benefits, but it need not come out of your pocket. For smaller pub chains with sales of less than £34 million and fewer than 250 staff the Carbon Trust will offer an interest free loan for changing to this new technology, but only if the supplier is reputable. Larger companies can access finance from various sources which will allow for an immediate saving or will simply invest from their own funds. With a Return on Investment of around two years for even the best LED solutions this represents an extremely efficient use of capital.

Ian-Peter MacDonald. MacDonaldTait Light. ianpeter@macdonaldtait.com Tel: 01603 -788448

Lighting restaurants sustainably

Getting the lighting right is fundamental to the ambience of a successful restaurant, but how can we do so “sustainably” ? New technologies are fast appearing, existing lighting staples are being banned, new lighting seems ugly and bland, where do you turn and who do you believe ?

For over twenty years we have developed a familiarity with a variety of types of lighting in the restaurant market. Large pendant lamps using GLS Edison screw or bayonet lamps parade above tables or above the bar. Warm halogen dichroics or metal halides downlight the primary spaces, reception and lavatory areas, bright in the day and dimming to soften the evening atmosphere. Incandescent clear candles burn behind wall sconces or chandeliers. These are all familiar and we are all used to their characteristics, but stand back and reflect on how frustrating and wasteful are these technologies.

The incandescent and halogen Lightbulbs use 90% of the energy they need to heat and only 10% to light. If you have a 50W halogen dichroic downlight, you will need 18W of air-conditioning to pull that heat away. In the short life of the halogen dichroic the light output will slide from the initial 900 Lumens to less than 300 Lumens and the energy it takes to generate this lesser light rises from 50W to 60W. Generating less than 20 Lumens for every Watt of energy employed this is highly inefficient lighting technology – each bulb is costing you around £40 to run a year in energy alone. And your team spends their life replacing them. If you fail to replace them, your restaurant looks shabby. A halogen dichroic lifetime varies from 1500 – 3500 hours at best. In a busy restaurant you will need to replace each bulb twice a year. Although the halogen dichroic is not on the banning list, all clear candles and clear GLS lamps will be banned from September 2012.

 What then does the “sustainable” answer look like ? The primary task is to get the light right. The reason why these traditional technologies are employed is because they offer bright, sparkly light, which dims to an attractive warm glow. These are qualities that a restaurant still requires. “Sustainable” obliges the solution to employ minimal embedded carbon – make it once and it will last a long time. Use recycled materials in the manufacture. Use materials which themselves can be recycled at end of life. Most importantly use minimal energy to light efficiently. IE use the least amount of Watts to generate the most number of usable Lumens. We say “usable” because metal halide technology is very efficient at over 90Lm/W and at over 3000 Lumens at source it is bright but is often used in extremely inefficient fittings. One of the most popular restaurant metal halide fittings only allows 6% of that light out of the fitting – so only 200 of those Lumens are being used !

The more eco conscious of us replace the GLS and incandescent lamps with new “energy saving” bulbs. Yes they tick the efficient light box, but they most certainly do not tick the sustainable box. Given that research at Stanford University illustrated that there is enough Mercury in each lamp to poison 6,000 litres of water, this is not a technology to be encouraged over the long term.

Salvo Alfano at Maxwell’s American Bar and Diner in London’s Covent Garden argues that LED lighting is the answer because it does tick all of the boxes. For Salvo the most important challenge was to get the light right. With 50W Low Voltage halogen dichroics he was spending over £6,000 every year on electricity but they offered a bright light which could be dimmed on his Mode Mirage system down to a lovely orange glow each night. He selected a 3.3 Watt dimmable LED lamp which offers fewer Lumens initially but is extremely efficient at 56 Lumens per Watt and the Lumen output will not decline. In fact it will take 50,000 hours or over 5 years before he will notice any light quality decline. He is saving an astonishing 3,750 halogen dichroics heading to landfill with this decision ! Marriott hotels put a nominal budget cost of £2.00 for every lamp change and assume a cost of 50p to buy each lamp. By this criteria Salvo will have saved £9375 in lamp change costs let alone the £25,000 he is saving over the same period in electricity costs and the 164 tonnes saved in carbon emissions.

With LED flexistrip offering sustainable efficient and stable cove and decorative lighting, new clear candles with dimmable 4W LED light sources, dimmable GLS using 8W LEDs and a host of downlight luminaires and LED spotlight lamp solutions, the sustainable solution is now available.

 “But this technology is prohibitively expensive”; we hear you say. Let us make a distinction between new build/refurbishment and retrofit where you want the savings by replacing existing bulbs. For a new build, the cost difference between the best LED solution and your new traditional lamp and fitting is approximately double, but this extra investment will be paid back typically in a restaurant within 18 months. Make this decision at the beginning and it slashes your running costs and your design is not compromised because the lights rarely break. In a retrofit the relative costs are higher and the payback will probably be longer, but it does depend on the task being lit and the amount of time that the lights are on for. Salvo’s payback at Maxwells was less than 13 months because his lights are on all of the time. At the moment the Government is prepared to help companies of less than £30 million sales and fewer than 250 employees by offering them an interest free loan. This is well worth it and will save you money immediately.

 How do you find this technology ? This is the crucial question. This is not a regulated technology and manufacturers are making outlandish claims for very ordinary products. Most of the primary sources for your lighting and electrical equipment simply do not have the understanding or testing capacity to measure these claims. Many of the design, mechanical and engineering, and energy management community are also rightly suspicious. The leading lighting sources of traditional lighting do offer LED solutions but they are often still relatively inefficient at 28 Lm/W. Compare that with 70 Lm/W for the new LED luminaires from specialist LED manufacturers in the UK and the US. These solutions do exist and the most effective route to them is via an LED specialist. A business which offers a selection of solutions, which stands by the specifications and guarantees and which allows you to trial and assess each option yourself. 

 You can achieve attractive sustainable lighting solutions for every task in a restaurant, and combined with developing staff behavioural patterns and using light and movement sensors it is realistic that the restaurant of the future will use well over 50% less energy in lighting than currently used. This article focuses on the why and what, but does not give the specifics on how to do so. The specific answer lies in the specific challenge. Tread carefully and work with specialists and you can achieve this today.

Ian-Peter MacDonald. MacDonaldTait Light. ianpeter@macdonaldtait.com Tel: 01603 -788448

About Ian-Peter MacDonald MA, FRSA. With a background in product design, Ian Peter MacDonald has spent the last four years introducing LED technology to the leisure and retail market in the UK. Working closely with both large chains such as Marriott Hotels, Whitbread and Radisson Hotels and smaller individual restaurants and hotels, Ian Peter is driving understanding of the benefits and processes of making the change to LED. Recently through the MacDonald Tait Light company, as well as specific light projects, Ian Peter has been concentrating on informing the design and engineering community of the issues around selecting this breakthrough technology.

Some LED Light specialists:

England and Wales:         MacDonald Tait Light, www.macdonaldtait.com

                                                Greenled Light. www.greenled.co.uk

Scotland:                             Solas Lights for Life. www.led-solutions.co.uk

Ireland and NI:                  Insight Energy www.ienergy.ie

Why LED your new home in 2010/11?

This period coincides with the coming of age of a lighting technology which will prove to light the 21^st Century. By 2020, over 70% of lighting is anticipated by LED lighting, a technology which is anticipated to reduce UK electrical consumption by 7%.

Minimal energy: This technology takes us to a new plane of lighting. The energy employed to light with LED is 1/5^th of that of incandescent light sources and ½ of that employed in “low energy” CFL technology. The light source is a semi-conductor chip  set on a printed circuit board (PCB). Each PCB can respond to sensors for light and movement transmit and can transmit this to a central system. Thus a combination of much greater efficiency in generating light and the ability to control when you need light takes the electricity employed in lighting a house down from around 40% of total current electrical consumption to around 10% (of a much smaller pie).

Longevity and stability: Historically each of the primary lighting sources have generated terrific heat as a by- product from using so much energy to light. Indeed in many contexts much of the job of air conditioning is to pull away the heat generated by the lights. As well as being an evident fire hazard the consequence of this excessive heat has been that the lights decline relatively quickly leading to a change in colour temperature, a reduction in light output and of course the need to change light bulbs regularly. In view of this, lighting in the past has been a throw away consumable approach which not only goes to landfill but in the case of “Low energy” lighting actually pollutes. Research at Berkeley University in California found that the mercury content of one CFL lamp would render 30,000 litres of water undrinkable.

Because such little energy is used to power LED light, the light source is cool. This enables considerable longevity and light stability. For a domestic project such as Hameau D’Orge it is unlikely that any light will need changing for fifteen-twenty years. The right LED solutions are designed to retain their light levels for well over 50,000 hours and are guaranteed to do so for 5 years. Cool light technology has other benefits – no IR and no UV allows you to put light directly onto watercolours and sensitive materials without any damage.

Materials: In order to sustain this longevity the LED light unit is a considerable piece of engineering. Manufactured largely from recycled aluminium , 85% of the entire unit is made from recycled materials and 100% of the light can itself be recycled. When the time does come  to address the light decline, it is merely necessary to “refresh” the light by replacing the PCB and checking the electronics. The only element disposed in twenty years will be the LED transformer and a PCB the size of a 50p coin.

Sympathetic colour: It is a legitimate criticism of much LED lighting that the colour of the light is unsympathetic and often a very cold blue tone. The lights which we are proposing for Hameau D’Orge are from PhotonstarLED Ltd, a spin off from Southampton University’s photometry department. Amongst their other exceptional contributions is their research and delivery of a controllable, sympathetic colour spectrum. In fact their “Smart white” intelligent light source can be tuned to emulate natural daylight cycles with a large tuneable colour gamut. In short, the best LEDs can not only give you the colour temperature you want for a particular task, but they can be tuned to respond to your needs and even moods !

The cost: 2010 is the year in which this technology has advanced to genuinely delivering an effective new light which surpasses any existing lighting technology. But these performances can be reliably delivered by only a small number of specialised manufacturers and because they are impressive luminaries built for the long term, they do cost more than traditional “dirty” lighting. However they do not cost that much more. The savings in electricity consumption alone allow a payback comparable to old lighting within 3 years – at current electricity costs.

Across the world Government is trying to encourage the introduction of low energy technologies. In the UK this is being managed by a “stick”- in the shape of the new Part L2 Building Regulations and a “carrot” in the form of ECA relief for approved technologies. Very few LED solutions currently satisfy the exacting demands of both of these.  PhotonstarLED,  with whom we propose to work for much of this project, exceed by some degree the criteria required for both.

In conclusion:

This technology is relatively new but the best practice has moved on from the early adaptor experimental period to a position of proven understanding. In a house being built in 2011, employing the best LED technology will allow a highly flexible, minimal energy and durable lighting future for a warm, comfortable and contemporary home.

Ian Peter MacDonald

Director – MacDonald Tait Light

8^th October 2010