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.