Top 8 in Smart Lighting

From mood adjusting to music playing and even an alarm, lighting is getting more and more smarter and here are 8 of the best smart lighting technology available now. Besides the fact they are super cool, they also save you a lot of money and last longer than your regular incandescent light. technologies 


Philips Hue 

Philips Hue allows you to control your lighting system at home, by connecting your Lightbulbs bulbs to your smartphone. All you need to do is download the app and your up and running. 

It gives you full control of the brightness, colour and timing - meaning you can now schedule your light to come on as you approach your house or change moods just before you smuggle up in bed. The long range connection also allows you to be miles away and still be in control of your lighting system. The careful production of the Philips Hue makes it a sensible, technical and an overall great addition to your home

Elgato Avea

Do not let the the classic look fool you, this light is as smart as they come. From one single device it allows you to control the mood lighting for up to 10 different bulbs. You can also keep it all in one colour or choose from seven different themes. 

Compatible with almost all devices from iPhones to iPads. The 7w LED screwable Light bulb is extremely energy efficient and has class A energy rating. 

It does not stop there, this light can also be an alarm clock that is capable to be set at a chosen time!. The only downside to it is the app, as it looks a tad simple and can also be hard to use for an android 

Osram Lightify range 

Osram introduces you to a lighting technology thats truly innovative and ahead of its time. whether its your garden or your bedroom you can guarantee having a light which adjusted to your moods and requirements. The bundle pack of gardenspot and normal led bulbs also comes with a gateway which acts as a router and connects you to your lighting wherever you may be, no seriously you don't even need to have wifi in your house. This product also has 16million colour (didn't even know there was that much) you can adjust to, and a 2000-6500 range in colour temperature - 2000 being extremely warm to 6500k being daylight. 

One thing i think is extremely cool is how you can take a picture of any object and the light can adjusted to colour of that object!. Having said all of this, lightify technology is definitely dressed to impress. 

Belkin Wemo LED Lighting starter set 

The belkin Wemo is a direct replacment for a 60w incandescent bulb and therefore is not capable of mood changing. You can choose from bayonet cap or a Edison screw each rated at 800 lumens. This is a little less than classic incandescent, but 800 lumens is still a great amount of output and with the added technology it sets it apart from your original incandescent light. The wemo pack acts as bridge between the wifi connection and the bulb.

You can set rules which can control your dimming and when your light turns on and off. you can also include a sleep period just like your tv. 

the app is relatively easy to use and as the Wemo pack acts as a wifi router you don't need to connect it to your router at home. Although the price can seem hefty it stands as a good introduction to smart lighting.

LIFX

This product is relatively expensive but you get a bulb of very high quality. Similar to the Elgato Avea  multiple colours can be controlled with this light - given you 16 million colour choices!. furthermore, you can control all the light at the same time and set an alarm for yourself. 

the difference with this product is that it can replace a 75w halogen and still last for up to 27 year, an investment worthwhile.


Senled Pulse 

This products has all features of a smart light such as; dimming control. connect it to a bluetooth device, once paired then you can hear your favourite music from a your Lightbulb! This is another slightly expensive product but when you think about it you get two products in one.

1byone Smart LED Bulb 

Similar to the senled pulse above this also contains an LED lightbulb and a bluetooth speaker. however, this product has the ability to change colour while playing music. 

initially there are translation issues with the Chinese app, but once you are able to click on the lamp tab you can control the brightness and colour of the lamp. this contains a lumen light output of 300 which is similar to 20w-30w halogen light, meaning it is not able to light a whole room single handedly. 

the white light is very cold and slightly bullish and does not have the same quality output in comparison to LIFX and HUE. However the idea of having a light evolving, relatively cheap, music playing light bulb is quite tempting. 

Lava BrightSounds  

Having a light which can play music at home is pretty cool but what about if you have that light all the time. Step in the Lava Bright,  its dimmable,  water proof, reachargeable and oh yeah it can also answer one phone calls. Personally I think this is the creme de la creme of speaker/lighting products and one which would be a great addition to your camping kit or even a barbecue in your garden.   

This blog post was adapted from "PCadvisor, 11 best smart lightbulbs 2015/2016: Best smart LED bulbs, smart lighting, mood lighting and speaker bulbs for your UK connected home" , 03/11/15 

LED solutions, a smart investment

Studies have suggested that energy management strategies are vital to the overall financial condition of an organisations. Deloitte combined with market research and strategy firm harrison to create the detailed fifth annual nationwide recourses study. This study discussed the connection between efficient energy management and profit generation in more detail   

Some companies have been shrewd in installing energy management strategies which aim to decrease the amount of energy accumulated. Evidence suggests that this strategic approach to energy reduction contributes to many financial advantages both for owners and investors. There has been a number of financial and energy analysts, companies and private investors who believe in this theory and have accepted the fact that good sufficient energy management has a direct influence to the profit in which an organisations generates.

Statistically speaking in the US 79% of companies in 2015 have suggested that the reduction of electricity cost is essential in reducing expenses and staying financially competitive. Interestingly, recent research from three economist, tow from hazard and one in the London school of economics attempted to find out the truth behind this relationship of profit and sustainable energy management. The researchers asked 90 companies all operating in the same sector and of the same size and capital power. 50% of the companies instilled a sustainable energy strategy with a look at long term investment and 50% didn't. The results showed that those who did would see their $1 (£0.63) invested turn into $22.60 (£14.33) in a 16 year span in comparison to $15.40 (£9.76) for companies who failed to do so.

Specifically speaking the the telegraph posted an article written by Richard Evans (11 Apr 2014) suggesting that LED light bulbs can save a costumer £240 a year. It also has the capability of paying for itself after just 5 months. 

LED bulbs are 10 times more efficient than your standard filament bulb and has the ability to change light into electricity more efficiently. This is showcased by the difference in the amount of wattage needed to operate the lightbulb. For an example a master LED spot MV value bulb only uses 4.3W and is equivalent to 50W.

LED lighting solutions and energy management control systems are new technologies that can be easily installed and can dramatically reduce your expenses. This will have an influence in your financial capability and ultimately increase your profit. 

Making LEDs a smart investment 

This blog post was adapted from:
Deloitte reSources 2015 study; Energy management passes the point of no return
the telegraph 11 Apr 2014; Richard Evans.

Scientists have found a way to make LEDs even more energy efficient!

We all know that LEDs can do wonders for our energy bills and help us reduce our carbon footprint but some people are reluctant to pay out the initial cost for the long term investment that LEDs are. Hopefully this is all about to change. 

Scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA are leading research to find a more sustainable and cheaper white LED. Although LEDs are everywhere now, more widespread use of the technology is limited due to the cost of the raw materials used to manufacture them and issues with light output. 
Researchers at Rutgers University have hoping to overcome these obstacles. Currently, the soft white colour that can be achieved in an LED is a blue coloured LED chip with a phosphor coating, this is how warmer colours of LEDs are created. This coating is made from materials which are composed of rare-earth elements, these elements are in short supply and are expensive. 

The research team at Rutgers University, led by Jing Li, is developing a hybrid phosphor based technology that will be much more sustainable, efficient and of a lower cost. This hybrid will use common and earth-abundant metals with organic luminescent molecules which will make it much easier to control the light that is created from the LED. 

This new research will hopefully bring down the already drastically falling price of LEDs so that more people will make the change to LED. Zhichao Hu, a member of Li's team has commented that,  'if more people in the US used LEDs in their homes and businesses, the country's electricity consumption could be cut in half.' He added that studies have shown that if every American house hold swapped one incandescent lamp for an LED it could save the country a staggering $700 million in annual energy costs. 

This shows the significant impact LEDs can have not just on our own energy bills but those of the world, perhaps if this new research brings out a change in the cost of LEDs, the world will be a much more energy efficient place, sooner than we had hoped. 




This blog post was adapted from http://phys.org/news/2015-08-technology-energy-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html . August 19th, 2015

Tunable Led Lamps helping to repel insects.

A team led by professor Travis Longcore at the University of Southern California put insect traps under a variety of different LED and compact fluorescent lamps, including experimental tunable LEDs from Philips that allowed the team to alter the colour temperature. In the New York Times article that reports the findings, it states that 'the tunable LEDs could be adjusted to attract about twenty percent fewer [bugs] than standard LEDs did.' 
Longcore changed the colour of the tunable LEDs to a warmer colour and left the other LEDs at a cooler, bluer colour. 

The compact fluorescent lamp attracted the most insects because they emit violet and ultraviolet light, they are much farther on the blue spectrum than the blue lights that were discovered to attract insects in a 2005 study in Faisalabad, Pakistan. LEDs attract less insects even when they are a bluer colour because they do not emit any ultraviolet light. 

The findings from this research could help reduce the amount of insect-borne diseases such as malaria if tunable LEDs were installed in higher risk and infected areas. 

It can't be stated that LEDs do not attract insects as they are still naturally drawn to light, however they do attract much fewer bugs. 

In order to attract less insects in your home, particularly in these summer months, it would be wise to buy tunable LED lighting so that you can alter the colour temperature of your lights. 
Please click here to see the Osram Lightify starter pack on our site, a white lamp that allows you to chose between 6500K which is a cooler white colour and 2700K, a more warm light. 

A tunable LED lamp is perfect as you can change the colour of the light in seconds, without having to change a lamp or even turn it off. This will mean you can still have your windows open and lights on when the rumoured heatwave does eventually come! 

To see the full range of the Osram Lightify, including colour changing indoor and outdoor lamps, please click here. 




This article was adapted from the Lux Review article, ' Want to repel insects? Tune your LED lamp' by Mark Halper, 7th July 2015. 

LEDs Needed For London's 24 Hour Tube Service

LEDs are the best choice for carrying out maintenance with the 24 hour underground service coming in September. 

The underground is going to be running 24 hours at weekends on some lines from September. The 'Night Tube' will run fully on the Jubilee and Victoria line and on most of the Piccadilly, Central and Northern line. It has been largely supported by underground users who believe that it will make travelling home at night much safer, quicker and reliable. However, having a the tube run all night will create problems for the underground's engineers. 

How will they maintain the lighting if they have less time to access it? The answer is simple, LEDs. With the longer lifetime of LEDs meaning less maintenance and the energy savings they bring it would be silly not to install them in the London underground. 

Bob Benn, head of stations engineering at Transport for London has stated that, 'The 24-hour tube will have a significant impact on maintenance, particularly on some of our central London stations. It means we are going to have to concentrate our maintenance on Sunday to Thursday evenings. We have to re-plan a lot of our maintenance activities to fit everything into those five days.' 

Hopefully by making the lighting LED, there will be less changes, meaning lighting will not need as much maintaining as other areas. As LEDs can be wiped clean using a pole from the platform without being damaged they will be much cheaper and quicker to clean. In addition to this, due to their extended lifetime they will need to be replaced much less often, unlike fluorescent tubes.

When speaking at the lighting for rail conference last week, Benn suggested that LED lighting could be an answer to the question of underground lighting, 'When we consider the use of new lighting technology, a significant factor is how much maintenance we need to do. From a business case point of view that's one of the advantages of things like LED, in terms of lamp life and how much we need to access the fittings. It's not just about energy saving, we look at the whole-life cost.' 

More and more LED lights are being installed in the underground, including retrofit tubes and new luminaries in redeveloped stations and now the extended lifetime is really starting to pay off. 

The London underground is in the middle of a £5.5 billion investment programme which will mean there will be lighting upgrades and improvements in some of the busiest underground stations. There is also a further improvement programme in the planning phases. 

Benn said that, 'there will be significant opportunities to change the lighting technology and also change the total ambience of the station and the environment.' 





This blog post was adapted from Lux magazine article, 'How LEDs are helping to make London's 24-hour Tube possible' 29th June 2015

Demand Side Energy Benefits Are (almost) Invisible to UK Government.

(image courtesy of ADE website)

A report carried out by the ADE (Association for Decentralised Energy) has shown that the UK is saving billions of pounds per year due to the invisible benefits of reduced energy demand. Over the last thirty years we are doing a lot more but with a lot less. 

The ADE represents the heat and power industry and claims that producing energy locally and using it more efficiently saves consumers over £37 billion per year compared with 1980. 

The report looked at local energy generation and energy saving schemes such as LED lighting switchovers, such actions have helped the UK to avoid building 14 new power stations, which equals the same as the country's current power generating capacity. 

The ADE stated in its report that 'invisible' benefits are often discounted as policymakers are focusing on energy supply rather than demand.It continues to say that it is easier for politicians to make big changes and evaluate on a bigger scale rather than looking into the finer detail of demand changes taking place across the country. 

 Lighting industry figures have come to similar conclusions of the government's approach to energy, promoting that more time and attention needs to be put into reducing demand, rather than boosting capacity and moving to renewable energy sources.

Last year Lux Magazine developed its own ideas of how capacity could be reduced if low-energy lighting was more widely used.

The ADE wants energy demand to be put in the spotlight as the focal point of future policy making. Director, Tim Rotheray said, ' Actions on the demand side have helped keep Britain's lights on, making the UK a better place to do business by keeping energy supplies consistent and reliable… Despite these considerable achievements, new energy policy often repeats the same patterns, taking a centralised approach to solving the energy challenge and overlooking the substantial contribution that users and individual actions can make.

‘With a clear, simple policy approach that values these smaller contributions, demand-side services can help consumers do even more to cut waste, improve competitiveness and reduce emissions. By 2020, we could save consumers a further £5.6 billion and make the UK a more attractive place to do business.

‘Adopting the right policy could mean that by 2020 we could save enough power to run the London Underground for 30 years, equivalent to 45 TWh (45 billion units). Further reduction in energy demand will make the UK more secure and enable greater energy independence.’

For more information on the ADE's report, click here.

Led lighting switchovers are an excellent way to reduce the demand for energy, please go to our website The LED Specialist and start making your home more energy efficient, 

Help reduce energy demand! 

SNAP! - The Lightbulb That Doubles As A Camera

US Company SENGLED have debuted a smart LED lamp that also functions as a high resolution camera, microphone and speaker. This lamp is supposed to act as a subtle home security and monitoring system designed to de-clutter your home from multiple leads and cables and keep things all in one place. This lamp streams a video to your smartphone or tablet through its app and allows the user to view videos in real time.  

The Snap also features voice and motion sensors, facial recognition and GPS boundary alerts. So this clever little lamp will alert you when a face it doesn't recognise is about the house, or when someone has entered the boundaries of your home. It is also so discreet that any intruder would mistake it as any other normal lamp, genius. 




(Pictures courtesy of SENGLED and Yahoo)

Snap is another highly functional lamp that SENGLED have added to their collection, some of their other innovations include a lamp that doubles as a wireless speaker as well as a lamp that also functions as a Wi-Fi repeater to boost signal to the blackspots in your home. 
Unfortunately the Snap is yet to be released or priced, but it is expected to come to market this summer. Stay tuned for more info about this bright little lamp! 

'Bring the Sun Indoors'

New Lighting Company Creates Lighting that Mimics the Sun and Moon

Startup lighting company Sunn is launching an app that controls LED smart lamps to simulate the 24-hour light cycle of the sun and moon. This would deliver incomparable holistic health benefits. 

This app claims to enable you to tell the time 'through subtle changes in colour and brightness', ease your transition into the day, keep you alert whilst working, help you wind you down for bed and eradicate winter blues.

This app will work with Sunn's wall or ceiling mounted plate shaped lamps but these are not yet available, however the app will also work with the Philips LED Lamp. Sunn's website allows consumers to 'pre-order' as the Los Angeles based company is currently crowdfunding its campaign. Crowdfunding is a way for startup companies to raise funds, it is an internet process in which people can donate their money to the company. 

Sunn has stated that, 'We've completed production- quality version of both Sunn lights. This means we've sourced and completed tooling for many of the large components which is typically the largest hurdle in bringing a product to market. We've also completed the first version of the iOS app as well as the cloud-based backend that will support the Sunn app on iOS, Android and web platforms.' 

Sunn has reported that it has organised manufacturers with operations in Europe, Southeast Asia and North America. 

Wired magazine reported that Sunn can help combat depression that afflicts people in the northern hemisphere in the dark of winter, a condition known as Seasonally Affected Disorder (SAD). 

Although white lights already exist to increase productivity, Sunn's lamps claim to offer a kinder and gentler approach to lighting that subtly copies the suns changes throughout the day rather than a concentrated burst of light for a certain period of time. 

Sunn's app can brighten a lamp gradually in the morning to work as an alarm, match lamps to  sunshine at a certain time of location, dim down lighting at bedtime and mimic the moon's glow. 

Companies like Sunn are helping us understand the health benefits of more natural lighting, take a look at their promotion video on their website for more details. 

http://sunnlight.com/

( Pictures Courtesy of Kickstarter) 

The future for lighting: Smart Lighting

The sale of home lamps that can do everything is about to be turned on, according to a new research report, lamp vendors will sell nearly a quarter of a billion smart lamps each year by 2020. 

Smart Lamps as they are commonly being known as, are LED lamps that connect to digital networks and can therefore perform in a variety of innovative ways. Some of these include; users being able to remotely switch their lamps on or off and change the brightness or colour from the comfort of their sofa or from around the world through apps. Whilst some smart lamps have been developed to flash when they detect smoke or intruders, to pulsate music and respond to other sounds and to light up inside the house when your car arrives into the driveway or turn your key in the lock. 

Smart lamps are associated with smart home controls similar to the Nest by Google and with the newcomer the 'Internet of Things' (IoT) or 'Internet of Everything' (IoE) which is the concept that all the planet's objects can communicate with people as well as each other. The common example of this being the fridge that detects a shortage of beer and promptly orders more to replenish its stocks. Smart home controls are will be able to do these things as they are already built around LEDs, which in addition to emitting light also act as an electronic chip. 

Most LED lamps on the market are not yet 'smart.' Whilst they offer energy savings of 80% or more compared to traditional light sources and are said to last over twenty years most lamp producers have not yet teamed this technology with intelligence. But this is changing, Philips have created the Hue lamp which can change to any desired colour as well as many other features. 

As prices start to drop and developers begin to standardise wireless controls, shipments will rapidly increase. GE have annoucned their smart lamp, 'Link' which will be sold for about £10, closing the price gap between smart lamps and non-smart LED lamps. 

The ABI said in a local press release that,' annual smart bulb shipments are set to increase to 223 million by 2020, achieving a total installed base of over 400 million.' This is a huge increase on the 2.5 million units that the ABI research said sold in 2013.

ABI practice director Malik Saadi has commented that, 'Because of the additional dimensions smart lighting brings to the consumer lifestyle, including lighting automation, and because of its carbon footprint efficiency, this industry will rapidly become one of the key technologies that could bring IoE closer to consumers.' 

The move towards connected smart lighting is attracting other industries into home and commercial lighting. Internet companies are poised to play a big role and even the automobile industry is on the convergence trail, with BMW recently announcing street lighting combined with an electric car charger. This begs the question, which industry does smart lighting really belong to? How likely is it that Google will become the next owner of the lighting profession?

Sainsbury's Uses LEDs Nationwide.

Sainsbury's has been considering LED technology for about seven years, first for their refrigerator lighting and later on for feature lighting and car parks. Overtime as the LED technology has developed, the supermarket giant has been considering it for more and more applications. 

Last year was a huge advancement of this. Sainsbury's opened its first all LED store in a brand new hypermarket in Leek, Staffordshire. This store consumes about 60% less energy for lighting than comparable stores thanks to the GE 'Blade' fitting, Nonetheless, this is still only one store.

However as of this year, Sainsbury's has made LED lighting the norm and the store in Leek is no longer going to be an exception.

Paul Crewe, Sainsbury's sustainability boss says the energy-efficient lighting is 'one of the most important technologies that we have introduced over the last three years.' All the major supermarkets have been dabbling with LED lighting but the scale of Sainsbury's decision and the sheer amount of attention that they are paying to lighting, makes it a cut above the rest. 

Simon Waldron, who joined Sainsbury’s last year as electrical engineering manager, says: ‘My role is to make it 100 per cent LED. But the real challenge is to go LED while maintaining look and feel. Customers are used to walking into a Sainsbury’s store and recognising the brand, and a change in lighting is a big visual element that could impact that.’

Sainsbury's  has already built five new stores that are using 100% LED lighting, and replaced traditional lighting in over 100 more. By the end of the year a total of 100,000 LED fittings will have been installed across the Sainsbury’s chain, reducing electrical load by 56 per cent (so far). The new lights are expected to pay for themselves in less than five years. 

As a result of the project, Sainsbury’s has made its way on to the Lux Awards shortlist in three categories: retail lighting, recycling, and client of the year.

The company’s lighting team has picked LED equipment from a range of manufacturers to come up with systems for new stores, old stores, big stores, little stores and everything in between. The project covers not just sales floors but also cafes, car parks, petrol stations, offices, back-of-house storage areas and distribution centres.

And to make sure each solution was exactly right for its needs, Sainsbury’s has in many cases developed products in tandem with its lighting suppliers, or requested custom versions of existing products. Dextra supplied a bespoke flat panel, GE developed its original 'Blade' product specifically for Sainsburys in addition to a semi-recessed version.In addition to this, JCC supplied its SkyTile LED panel in a previously unavailable colour temperature. ‘We don’t just take the first product we look at in a catalogue,’ says Waldron, ‘we work with manufacturers to come up with the ideal solution for each area in the estate. Generally we don’t take no for an answer. That’s not being arrogant, but we can always push manufacturers to come up with non-standard solutions that work for us.’
Sainsbury's massive LED lighting upgrade is part of a £1 billion energy-saving project known as Project Graphite – a reference to the carbon emissions that it aims to prevent.

The supermarket industry is more than competitive ever due to the rapid rise of cheaper stores such as Aldi and Lidl. Sainsbury's is hoping that a more sustainable approach and all the benefits that are attached to it. The team have calculated the total cost of owning the LED fittings for their whole lifetime, not just how many years it will take for the lamps to have paid for themselves.
Sainsbury’s aim is to achieve a 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, compared with a 2005 baseline. And because it’s building more supermarkets at the same time, the reductions at each site will have to be significantly higher than that.

The new Sainsbury’s that opened in the centre of Wolverhampton in July is a prime example of what’s being done. The £60 million, 6,700m2 store contains LED luminaires from Dextra, GE, Holophane, JCC, Nualight, Philips, Thorlux and Zumtobel (as well as plentiful daylight through the skylights). It uses about 60% less energy for lighting than a comparable store with traditional lighting.

Its a long while since LED light fittings were recognisable by the grid of glary blueish dots. When choosing manufacturers for this project, Sainsbury’s insisted on four key elements, the first of which was that there be no compromise on the current look and feel of the fittings. The other things suppliers had to offer were energy efficiency, no component replacements for 10 years, and proper recycling of old luminaires.

One area where Sainsbury’s has been particularly clever is the attention is warranties, working with each manufacturer to get the correct warranty to make sure that minimal maintenance would be required for the life of the fittings. Sainsbury’s writes its own warranties with manufacturers, usually asking for five-years’, covering both labour and parts.

Sainsbury's worked with the recycling scheme Recolight, which our sister company, Lightsave Fuller Read, also works with. By the end of this year Sainsbury's will have recycled over 220 tonnes of old lamps and louvres.Whilst recycling their old lamps they are also refurbishing over 60,000 luminaire carcasses that would have otherwise been sent to the scrap yard. 

If you want to follow in the footsteps of Sainsbury's and replace your lighting with energy saving LEDs, please go to our website, www.theledspecialist.co.uk. We stock GE and Philips lamps, two of the companies that were involved in this vast energy saving project as well as many others.

Start your own energy saving project now with the Led Specialist!

The Sistine Chapel Illuminated with LED lights.

If you ever visited the Sistine Chapel you will remember the strain you felt in your neck and eyes when trying to get a proper glance at the beauty of Michelangelo's ceiling. Strain no longer. The Vatican recently turned on fifty new luminaires with over seven thousand LEDs inside that bring a new light to the masterpieces in the ceiling such as The Creation of Adam and The Last Judgement.
The new lighting brings the amazing art work into full, clear and colourful view. 
Prof Antonio Paolucci , director of the Vatican Museums said that, 'We want to honour the 450th anniversary of Michelangelo's death by providing new lighting for his work.' 
They have definitely achieved that, and the artist would probably be very proud of the project which was led by Osram, which has said that the new LEDs provide ten times the brightness of the lights replaced, whilst causing energy consumption to reduce by ninety percent. 

Martin Reuter, the senior technical project manager at Osram commented that the most difficult part of the two year job was 'to prove that the light was not harmful to the art.'  In order to achieve this the company did not use phosphor-coated white light, but instead used a mix of blue, red and green LEDs.Osram tested this by sending original pigments for the ceiling, which Michelangelo completed in 1512, to Hungary's Pannonian University, who after a year, gave the all clear. This meant that now the light is much kinder and gentler to the paintings. 

Other partners involved in the project were Barcelona's Institut de Recerca en Energia, which investigate the energy reductions and Rome-based lighting designer Faber Technica. 

The European Commission helped fund the partners (the money did not go straight to the Vatican, as the Vatican is not part of the EU). The parties have not revealed the full cost of the project. But the results speak for themselves, as the photo above shows. 

Watch the video below to see more! 

Number of Lights in Average Home Doubles!

The average British home is now smaller than ever, but despite this the average amount of lights in the home has doubled in the last decade. In 2004 the number of light sources in the average home was fifteen but now it has rocketed to over thirty. The survey done by Homebase has shown that we are illuminating our homes with more spotlights, wall lights, pendants and other lamps.

Homebase suspects that our decreasingly shrinking living spaces means that people are choosing to spruce up their homes with decorative lighting as lamps are a more fashionable and functional way to accessorize your home

Lighting buyer for Homebase, Pamela Collard commented that, 'People are certainly being smarter with their lighting and noticing what a huge impact lighting can make to how a room both looks and feels.'

Updating lighting was found to be more popular with renters over home owners, especially those who want to make their home more like their own but are unable to make the permanent changes or redecorating or hanging pictures.

Updating lighting was found to be most popular with renters, especially those who want to make their home their own but are unable to make more permanent changes by redecorating or even hanging pictures.

It might be wise with all these lights in your home to switch to LED light bulbs,which aswell as looking good and illuminating your home will save you money on your energy bills. The more lights in your home that you can replace with LEDs the more energy and money you save. To see our full range of LED lighting please go to www.theledspecialist.co.uk

Ambient Lighting Affects Your Experience, Poor Lighting Drives Customers Away From Restaurants. - Summary of Lux Magazine Article

    According to a survey carried out by energy provider, NPower, nearly one third of British people have walked out of a pub or restaurant because the illumination was not up to scratch. 'Big hospitality', a lighting trade publication found that 17% of the 1,500 people surveyed avoided an establishment because the lighting was too bright and 12% due to the lighting being too dim. 

    Npower's head of customer service for small business, Rachel Vincent, stated that, 'We can probably all think of an occasion that has been spoiled by a restaurant or bar not getting the ambiance right, and lighting is a crucial part of that, she continued that, 'Our research shows how damaging bad lighting can be to the success of a small business. For this reason, business owners need to think more than just their menus or location. Ambiance is vital to securing new customers and getting old ones to return.' 

‘We can probably all think of an occasion that has been spoiled by a restaurant or bar not getting the ambiance right, and lighting is a crucial part of that,’ said NPower’s head of customer service for small business, Rachel Vincent. ‘Our research shows how damaging bad lighting can be to the success of a business. For this reason, business owners need to think about more than just their menus or location. Ambiance is vital to securing new customers and getting old ones to return.’

The survey also found that lighting was more important than price to 66% of customers when deciding on an establishment for a date, and was also more important than music for 53% of them. A staggering 88% said that the lighting in general would affect how much they enjoy a date or romantic meal. 

It goes to show that lighting is much more important to people that you might expect. Its not just in restaurants that lighting ambiance needs to be perfect in order the achieve the best effect, hotels for example need to do all that is required to make their guests as comfortable as possible. If lighting affects one's mood, experience and comfort so much, it is obvious that making adjustments at home could create more ambiance and make your home a more comfortable place to live. 

To make your home more ambiant whilst cutting costs and reducing energy consumption please go to http://theledspecialist.co.uk/ to browse our selection of leds. Chose colour warm white or 2700K (Kelvin) for the most warming colour of led lighting to give your home a more ambient glow.