Specification of Fixtures

The recommendations in this guide focus primarily on room ambient lighting through the use of good-quality fluorescent technology. Only a few types of light fixtures are needed for an HPL installation.

This section offers information on the light fixtures needed to implement direct lighting, recessed lighting, and indirect lighting designs as applied in each of the room types. As with the room-by-room designs, examples of acceptable fixtures are organized by these three levels.

The list of lighting products and manufacturers below meet the HPL design objectives. This list is a good tool to start you on your way to selecting the appropriate fixtures, but is not meant as a comprehensive list of recommended manufacturers or products. Preference is given to Energy Star-rated fixtures wherever possible, as these typically have efficient, durable, hum-free ballasts. They are noted as "ES" in the listing.

Click on a link below for fixture specifications:

• Fixtures for Direct Lighting
• Fixtures for Recessed Lighting
• Fixtures for Indirect Lighting

Introduction to LEDs
A new light source, light emitting diodes (LEDs), is currently coming onto the market. The range of fixtures offered featuring LED technology is quite limited and those available are very expensive. Nonetheless, LEDs probably represent the lighting source of the future because they offer so many desirable properties:

• A broad range of colored and white light (you may be familiar with the red LED brake lights on cars). White light can be tuned in a range from 2700K to 6500K or higher for various applications.
• A range of color rendering properties to a CRI of approximately 90+
• Potentially good efficiency, i.e. lumens output per watt of electricity input (see discussion below)
• A long lamp life up to 50,000 hours or more, so they rarely need to be replaced
• The ability to be dimmed, requiring no special ballasts as with fluorescents
• The small physical dimension of the individual LED chip, which offers the potential for good optical control of the light output.
• Good cold weather performance, making them suitable for outdoor lighting
• An instant start, so there is no slow strike and warm-up as with fluorescents
• No ballast hum

The current stage of development of LED technology also reveals some challenges to their use:

• Their efficiency, i.e. lumens/watt, is keyed to the white light color and CRI chosen. Unfortunately, the warmer the white and the higher the CRI, the lower their efficiency. The result is that they are currently more efficient than incandescent lamps but very close to the efficiency of CFLs, while being less efficient than the best linear fluorescent lamps.
• LED light output is emitted outward from the face of the diode. Because of this directionality, LEDs work better in directed light fixtures, such as recessed downlights and strip lights, than CFLs or linear fluorescents. Thus, the true judgment of lighting efficiency should be made for the fixture and not just for the lamp. Fixture efficiency is not a commonly used measure, which makes comparisons between LED fixtures and CFL fixtures more difficult.
• The small dimension of the LED chip makes it a potentially useful substitute for the small MR11 and MR16 lamp applications. It would be much more efficient than the incandescent version. However, current LED chips are not powerful enough to effectively equal the light output of the incandescent lamps.
• LEDs produce a lot of heat, which must be dissipated through proper design of the fixture. This presents a further challenge in the design of such fixtures as attic recessed downlights or track lights.
• As a new technology, LEDs are expensive; they are many times the cost of an equivalent incandescent or fluorescent fixture.

LED technology is developing rapidly and many of these shortcomings will be worked out in the coming years. It is intended that subsequent editions of the High Performance Lighting Guide will include LED fixtures and lamps.