Using light to create Effective interior spaces: A Conversation with Sophie from FACTORYLUX
Sophie Langley is the business development manager at FACTORYLUX, a leading architectural lighting brand based here in West Yorkshire. They pride themselves on using the highest quality LEDs, offering the world’s only colour consistency warranty and have developed their innovative products and accessories to help designers achieve high-performance lighting schemes with a range of benefits to the end user.
RE-VIVE spoke to Sophie about FACTORYLUX’s people-focused approach to lighting design, developments in the industry, the science of LED technology, and why it all matters in creating spaces that people enjoy spending time in.
Thanks for joining us Sophie, I suppose to understand what a successful lighting scheme looks like, we must first gain an understanding of the pitfalls of bad quality lighting. Could you tell us a bit about what we want to avoid when choosing light sources?
So the Colour Rendering Index (CRI) is a quantitative measure of the ability of a light source to reveal the colours of various objects faithfully in comparison with an ideal or natural light source. Bad quality LED’s that have low CRI are basically missing vital parts of the colour spectrum.
Ever bought a pink dress in a shop, to come out and realise it is actually red? This is down to low levels of R9 (the red part of the light spectrum) in the LED’s the shop was lit with! This is a common problem in low cost LED’s and is the most obvious difference when choosing an LED module. On the flip side, over saturated light can make products look unnatural. Furthermore - furnishings, fabrics, paintings etc. can actually deteriorate overtime under UV rays emitted from incandescent and fluorescent bulbs.
A successful FACTORYLUX lighting installation at a Lush flagship store. Due to the vibrancy of colours in Lush products it is vital they are “true to life”. high quality LED’s were also used at cosmetic counters over sinks to help enhance the product quality on skin tones, hence the R9 being so important! The scheme has now been rolled out across over 250 new and refurbished stores worldwide.
LIGHTING DESIGN | MICHAEL GRUBB STUDIO
PHOTOGRAPHY COPYRIGHT | SERENA PEA
So why’s it important to get this colour consistency right when designing a space?
Well lighting plays a vital role in the way people experience and understand interiors by creating the mood, ambience, functionality and style. If you’re investing in an interior fit out, it’s important to get this right so that your end user enjoys using the space and has the experience of it that you intended for them. Whilst bad lighting has the ability to make expensive furnishing and textiles look cheap, good lighting shows it off and even enhances the quality finish of the space.
Did you know lighting even has a huge effect on how appetising food looks, the quality of a product you are purchasing and even how you look in a gym! For example, we supplied BXR Gym founded by Anthony Joshua and it’s now the most Instagrammed gym in the world. Coincidence? We think not! Having high CRI across the colour spectrum is extremely important for skin tones and affects not just how we look but how we feel!
If you are at a gym and you look and feel good, are you going to return? Yes! Or do you look pale, drawn out and not your radiant self? Maybe that gym isn’t giving you the “feel good” factor and you may not return.
BXR | LONDON
LIGHTING DESIGN | DHA DESIGNS/BERGMAN INTERIORS
PHOTOGRAPHY COPYRIGHT | GILLES BONUGLI KALI
And poor quality lighting can also affect our health right, how does that work?
Stroboscopic effects (flicker) from poor quality LED’s /drivers can cause headaches, fatigue and eye strain. 90% of a company’s cost is their workforce salaries so it’s essential to have a comfortable workspace for employees to be happier and more productive whilst ensuring the work environment is not having any negative health impacts.
Glare is a common problem in workplaces, inappropriate brightness, absence of glare control and ill placed luminaires can all be causes of eye strain, headache, fatigue and staff absences. UGR is a model for expressing the risk of glare, measured on a scale of 5-40. The Society of Light & Lighting recommend a maximum of UGR19 for office environments.
Light can bounce of reflective surfaces such as computers, whiteboards, desks so it is pivotal to ensure the correct glare methods are in place. This is why we’ve actually developed a UGR filter for all our luminaires to guarantee you are maintaining a safe glare level in a range of applications.
DELOITTE HQ | LONDON
LIGHTING DESIGN | GIA EQUATION
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