High Performance Lighting

As part of a quality home, high performance lighting (lighting design that considers aesthetics, comfort, safety, visibility, and efficiency) not only improves the look and feel of rooms, but can also reduce the energy required for lighting and cooling. Potential homebuyers notice the difference in how homes that are well lit feel, and in a market where there is often little difference between one builder’s product and another, this small competitive edge may give you an advantage. Additionally, reduced energy use, a cost savings for homeowners, is an advantage that has become clearly marketable because of increased consumer awareness and rising energy prices. Builders would benefit from these improvements through the competitive advantage that building quality homes helps to achieve.

This year IBACOS is conducting research on high performance residential lighting strategies. One component of our research addresses the need for technological improvements for residential lighting. In addition, recognizing a lack of easy-to-use design guidelines for builders, we plan to develop a manual of guidelines targeted to builders.

To discuss these issues and get feedback from lighting and building professionals, we held a meeting on May 22 at our facilities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Attendees and presenters included professional lighting designers, researchers from national government laboratories and from lighting research centers, manufacturers, and Building America builders and consultant teams. See our Summary Report(pdf) for additional information. Key conclusions include:

• Currently, efficient lighting designs and fixtures are used in commercial buildings. This technology may be drawn upon to bring high performance lighting into residential application.
• Luminaire efficiency is as important as lamp efficiency in developing a high performance design.
• High efficiency luminaires are possible even for accent lighting.
• High performance residential lighting should be based on lamps that provide 3000ºK correlated color temperature (CCT) and 80+ color rendering index (CRI).
• Indirect ambient lighting is a recommended strategy.
• High performance residential lighting is very acceptable and even sought by homeowners.
• Builders’ model homes present an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the attractiveness of high performance lighting designs.

Currently, we are serving as an energy consultant for The New American Home® 2004, which is being built in Las Vegas, Nevada. We are working with GE Lighting on the lighting design and are making recommendations for including energy efficient lamps and fixtures.