Lighting design: Technical Lighting Design
A breakdown of what goes into a Brilliant Lighting technical lighting design pack with sample design documents.
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The Lighting Buyer’s Technical Reference Guide
A number of the questions we're frequently asked are addressed in The Lighting Buyer's Technical Reference Guide. A lot of the questions related to LED and how to use it.
The Lighting Buyer’s Technical Reference Guide is a 15 page document designed to help you understand how to specify and select the right LED lighting for your project. Drawing on our own design experience, it aims to help you understand the benefits and avoid the pitfalls associated with LED lighting technology.
The topics covered include:
- Dedicated LED fittings vs retrofit LED lamps
- Selecting LED lighting – our selection criteria for identifying the best LED fittings
- Colour temperature and colour rendering
- Dimming methods including 0-10v, DMX, DALI
- Matching fittings, drivers and dimmers
- Wiring fundamentals
It's an old document originally designed to support the launch of our online shop in 2013. It's been updated but It's due a serious revamp which will be coming soon. We didn't want to relaunch our new site without it though. The technical content is still as valid as it was, it just looks its age.
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File Type: PDF | File Size: 4 MB
Traditional picture lights or indeed simple downlights can damage pictures if they’re poorly specified. We use high quality LED light sources and filters to ensure that harmful UV (Ultraviolet) light is filtered out. When working with significant artwork we prefer to be involved in both the specification and the actual commissioning and fine-tuning. That gives us the opportunity to measure the light levels on the picture itself and make sure the picture isn’t overlit which can cause damage.
We’ve developed a beautiful high quality picture light that combines the elegant look of the classic picture light form with the latest in LED technology. Have a look at the ArtView picture light here.
The LD65 fittings can be driven using the [TXDEL 350/500/700 constant current drivers](The LD65 fittings can be driven using the TXDEL 350/500/700 constant current drivers which are available through our web shop, and it is automatically offered as one of the suggested drivers on the page following the LD65 order page.
This driver works on 1-10v dimming, and will operate on 120 voltage input so you will not need a transformer. However with 1-10v dimming you will also require a separate control cable between the driver and a suitable dimmer switch. We don’t currently supply a mains dimmable driver that will work with a 120 voltage input.
Being UK based we are unable to advise specifically on US regulations and so we would always recommend specialist advice is sought (unless of course you have expertise in this field). We can provide further details of current delivery times and costs to the US if required.
More information can be found in our Lighting Buyers Technical Reference Guide.
All the fittings and retrofit lamps we sell have a quoted life expectancy. Like fluorescent, the light output from an LED will decline over time. The dedicated LED fittings we use and sell have superb longevity and reliability with an expected lifespan of 70,000 hours. If used for an average of 6 hours per day every day, this equates to nearly 30 years.
Retrofit LED lamps have a shorter life but again we use the best available, typically c.35,000 hours. Where we can, we always use dedicated LED fittings.
To read more about reliability and longevity in LED lighting see page 5 of The Lighting Buyer’s Technical Reference Guide
Hi Chris and thanks for the question. The mains dimmable driver for the Dino is a 300mA Osram driver (they come supplied with the fitting, there’s no extra cost to the price you see on the shop here) and there’s a 1:1 relationship between the drivers and fittings.
It’s the only combination that we or the manufacturer recommend; we’ve not found anything that we’d be happy to use. You can still use multiple fittings on each circuit but each fitting would have its own driver.
Lumens are a measure of light output. It’s important to understand how much light a fitting can deliver. When we talk about a product being a genuine 50w low-voltage Halogen downlight equivalent, we mean a fitting with a max lumens of 900+
For a wider overview of LED lighting technology, download The Lighting Buyer’s Technical Reference Guide. There is a section that covers light output and the comparative output of different light types.
Some LED fittings have a choice of how ‘hard’ you run them, e.g. they can be run at 350mA, 500mA or 700mA. Essentially, the higher the mA, the harder they are run, the more power they use and the more light they give out. They also generate more heat which is why there are limits – for example if you ran a fitting at 700mA when its thermal management was only designed to take 350mA you would significantly reduce the life of the fitting.
For a wider overview of LED lighting technology, download The Lighting Buyer’s Technical Reference Guide
They take a mains voltage input. In the UK we supply 230v input drivers. Please have a look at The Lighting Buyer’s Technical Reference Guide for more details on DALI and DALI drivers.
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