From motion sensors to emergency lighting, the team at Red Arrow rounds up five of the best retrofit lighting solutions for commercial lighting projects.
What’s not to love about a retrofit project? They’re faster, less disruptive and don’t come with the added complications of a full re-design – that is, if you can get the products you need to fulfil the brief. If you can’t, then retrofit requests can soon become a nightmare, with client expectations and the harsh on-site reality failing to match up.
Yet with LED continuing to develop, and new solutions available in everything from motion sensors to emergency lighting, there are more retrofit possibilities to offer your clients than ever before.
Here, we round up five retrofit solutions for your next commercial lighting project that will help you deliver on your client requests for minimal disruption and maximum efficiency:
Request 1: Fuss-free emergency lighting
If retrofitted emergency lighting has you thinking of bulky battery packs stuck on ceilings, think again.
Surface-mounted emergency lighting has moved on, with new Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) battery technology meaning that compact, slimline emergency lights can now be installed with minimal disruption to completed projects, or any premises where it’s difficult to drill into ceilings to install recessed lighting, such as listed buildings or awkward building conversions.
As well as being smaller, this new breed of surface-mounted emergency lights is longer-lasting in terms of recharge and discharge cycles, too. The Sentinel range of 3W surface-mounted emergency lights has a depth of just 108mm, and is suitable for both open areas and escape routes.
Request 2: CCT and wattage selectable LED
If you’re looking for a way to offer clients more flexibility with their lighting design, without any major works needing to take place, there are adjustable downlights available with in-built CCT and wattage selection that can easily replace existing non-selectable fittings.
These downlights can be retrofitted into a range of existing ceiling holes: the Discus Max CCT Selectable, for instance, has a bracket that can be adjusted to fit cut-outs between 65mm and 310mm. With the Discus, you can select between three colour temperatures – 3000, 4000 and 5700K – and three wattages of 15, 22 and 28W, without the need for extensive drilling, replastering and decorating after the job.
Request 3: PIR control
Adding lighting control to an installation doesn’t always require additional devices or switches to be added to the circuit. If you’re looking to add PIR control as part of an LED retrofit, you can install luminaires with motion sensors built into the fitting, not as an addition to the lighting system.
The Discus Max CCT Selectable is also available with integral PIR, allowing you to retrofit motion-controlled lighting with minimal disruption on-site. These are a good option for commercial clients who may be looking to cut down on their energy consumption, allowing lights in areas such as hallways and stairwells to switch off when they are out of use, but without the need for a full overhaul of the lighting design.
Request 4: Compact fluorescent downlights replacements
For a neat and tidy way to replace compact fluorescent downlights with an LED alternative, the Venus compact downlight range provides excellent like-for-like substitutions.
Available in 150, 170 and 200m versions, Venus downlights can slot neatly into existing compact fluorescent cut-outs while ceiling brackets also adjust from below using a screwdriver to get a precise fit, so you shouldn’t have to ‘fill in’ any gaps around the fitting.
Venus products can also be another easy way to retrofit emergency lighting into existing lighting schemes when combined with a Titan remote emergency conversion kit, converting the fitting into an integral emergency light.
Request 5: LED ceiling panels
Ceiling tiles and panels used to be notoriously difficult to retrofit with LED. While one option was to fit standard LED downlights into a tile to replace the fluorescent panel, it wasn’t always the best way to achieve an equivalent light dispersal.
Probably the easiest retrofit example is taking out a 600×600 panel with fluorescent or compact fluorescent in the luminaire and replacing it with a 600×600 LED panel. Significant energy savings can be made by doing this and with the latest back-lit panels and high-quality TP(a) rated high performance microprism diffusers of <UGR19 they can reduce the glare too.
One company that is helping to source better retrofit options is Red Arrow Electrical. As well as developing products with easy retrofitting in mind, the technical and design helpline is open to any installer looking for product advice. The team can even supply full customer lighting designs to client specifications.
Browse the Red Arrow lighting range brochure here
