People-friendly light

For this new view on lighting plan­ning, we have coined the term »people-friendly lighting«. People-friendly lighting is light that takes into account people’s various acti­vi­ties and adapts fle­xi­bly to their needs; lighting that rein­for­ces a sense of belon­ging. Good lighting tools sup­port this. They help to streng­then local iden­ti­ties and improve qua­lity of life. Espe­cially when it comes to out­door lighting: in day­light, a lumi­naire is part of the street fur­ni­shings, its pre­sence con­stan­tly sha­ping the envi­ron­ment. It is a sculp­ture. At night, it takes on the role of sun­light, pro­vi­ding secu­rity, orien­ta­tion and direc­ting the view. Lumi­nai­res can be discreet or expres­sive. They can draw people’s gaze onto them­sel­ves or onto other objects.

Their appea­rance and the colour of the light can create a variety of effects: colder light draws atten­tion while warmer light feels cosier. Light can invite people to pause for a while and can be fasci­na­ting in itself. We all know the magic of sit­ting around a camp fire, simply wat­ching the light and never wan­ting to move away: suc­ces­sful lighting design can evoke just that fee­ling.

LED lighting has been put to highly effi­cient use in the last decade. The main aim was to achieve mini­mum energy usage while opti­mi­sing illu­mi­na­tion. LEDs have now become so effi­cient that it’s time to turn more of our atten­tion to other fac­tors: the colour of the light, the effect of the light source, the beauty and cha­rac­ter of the lumi­nai­res. They shape our envi­ron­ment and so influence our emo­tions. Lighting thus needs to meet indi­vi­dual requi­re­ments, and under­pin the per­so­na­lity of the town, the com­mu­nity, the loca­lity. It’s why we offer our lighting units in a variety of ver­sions: the »Per­for­mance« series for more per­for­mance-driven optics, and »Com­fort« pro­ducts that con­si­der visual com­fort, plus a range of colour tem­pe­ra­tu­res. This ensu­res effi­cient com­pliance with stan­dards even with widely spaced poles, and allows adjust­ment of the lighting points accor­ding to other oppor­tu­ni­ties and requi­re­ments. High visual com­fort is crea­ted through light-wide­ning aper­tu­res and warmer light tones (2 700K to 2 200K). All our new pro­ducts are also avai­la­ble with an optic of less than 1% scat­te­red light pro­por­tion to make the night sky visi­ble again. We call this our Night Sky tech­no­logy.

Intel­li­gent tech­no­logy is thus crea­ting new oppor­tu­ni­ties that don’t com­pro­mise on effi­ciency. For exam­ple, lighting con­trol systems that con­trol the level of illu­mi­na­tion accor­ding to the time of day, the number of people or what they are doing, offer huge poten­tial. Light poles can be indi­vi­dually equip­ped and exten­ded: for exam­ple with sen­sors that con­trol the flow of traf­fic or with a host of other intel­li­gent options which we pre­sent in grea­ter detail in the Smart Lighting chap­ter.