Q) What are the positive effects of a good indoor lighting scheme?
A) The first and foremost role for lighting is to enhance visibility, but with advancing trends and scientific improvements things have changed now.
Besides providing utilitarian uses like visibility, lights now provide an aesthetic appeal and emotional quotient to interior spaces. Good lighting not only helps in seeing things properly in a given space but also enhances the overall style and décor of interiors. In this fast paced life, lighting solutions have aligned themselves to moods and emotions, giving a sense of relaxation and solace to the mind.
With the advent of new technologies and sensing systems, LED systems have become intelligent enough to throw light in an interior space only when desired thereby restricting the unwanted wastage of power.
Q) What is your observation on the latest global trends as far as the indoor lighting is concerned?
A) Some global trends for indoor lighting are as under:
1. More lights get smarter, laying the foundation for more Internet controlled lights
The LED migration is stimulating a huge increase in the installation of intelligent lighting controls such as occupancy sensors, photo sensors and wireless networks that can be interlinked.
2. Viable energy-efficient options to fluorescent tubes to emerge
One lighting format notably slow to migrate to LED technology has been fluorescent tube lighting, mainly due to cost factors. But the replacement market across stores, offices, warehouses and so on will get more attention this year.
3. Organisations test lighting to improve morale, health and productivity
The idea is to create an indoor environment that could echo natural lighting conditions found outdoors, even mimicking the effect of a cloud obscuring the sun on an otherwise bright day.
Q) What are the advantages of LED lighting? How is the acceptance of these in India?
A) Advantages of LEDs:
• Long lasting: LED lights have an extremely long service life of up to 25 years or more than 40,000 to 50,000 hours.
• Insensitive: LEDs have an extremely small and robust design. This makes handling easier during furniture construction and transport.
• Low heat generation: Because of their extremely low power consumption, LED lights hardly generate any heat. This means that LED lighting systems are particularly suitable for displays.
• Energy-saving: LED lights use an impressive 90% less power than conventional light bulbs. This means that they can be used to implement modern lighting scenarios in furniture, and still be inline with the energy saving trend.
• Powerful: Modern LED lights are bright and have a saturated light colour.
They achieve full brightness as soon as they are switched on. LED furniture lighting therefore has a lasting effect at the push of a button.
• Rich in variants: LED lights are available in different colours and can also be designed as colour changing lights. This allows the colour temperature to be coordinated with furniture contents such as exhibits in the best possible way.
Acceptance of LEDs:
This is a gradual changing process; people take a defensive step when it comes to high initial costs, especially when it comes to replacement of bulbs. However, this is significantly changing since the last couple of years and most of the educated customer segments are now going only for LEDs.
As per the latest data there has been a decline in growth of halogen and CFL lamps and as per the predictions for 2020, LED will dominate 60% of the industry.
With the advent of new technologies and sensing systems, LED systems have become intelligent enough to throw light in an interior space only when desired, thereby restricting the unwanted wastage of power…
Q) How is Hafele India’s contribution in this area? What kind of innovation have you done to promote the use of LEDs for indoor decoration?
A) Hafele has always been recognised for its range of Furniture LED lights. We were in fact the pioneers of furniture lighting in India.
With a firm foot set in this segment of lighting, Hafele has spent the last one year completing its LED assortment with the inclusion of a number of attractive ambient lighting solutions – these include ceiling lights, panel lights, track lights and many others.
Our new generation of LOOX lighting systems focuses on the ‘easiness’ of installing LEDs in your homes. Breaking the myths of the tedious and never-ending process of fixing LEDs in a home environment, this range presents itself with mere plug-and-play technology that facilitates easy and tool-free installation of LEDs.
Our LED drivers are colour coded as per their Voltage levels (where yellow stands for 12 V systems, green for 24 V systems, blue for 350 mA systems and brown for 700 mA systems) making the integration of LEDs smoother.
All the lighting fixtures from our new generation of LOOX lights are engineered keeping modularity as a clear focus.
This allows for possibilities to replace existing switches with dimmer options without having to re-lay the cable.
Q) What is your advice to the prospective buyers of lighting solutions?
A) Like any other facet of home designing, lighting too should be considered at the very start of an indoor creation or renovation project.
This gives room to create a feasible environment for cabling and other aspects that are closely related to light installation.
After design, functionality and aesthetics, lighting adds the fourth dimension to any indoor space.
