Warehouse Lighting
Today’s warehouse is under a lot of pressure–volatile inventory requirements, an aging workforce, integrating new technologies, skyrocketing customer experience expectations, and more. You know it’s more important than ever to work smarter instead of harder. That’s why LED warehouse light fixtures are fast becoming the norm.
Although it makes up one aspect of building operations, lighting is a significant driver of efficiency for warehouses. Being strategic about how you use LED lights will make a real impact. In fact, experts are predicting that by 2030, 87% of all light sources worldwide will be LED.
Understanding the Factors that Shape Your Lighting
Generally, warehouse lighting is a combination of warehouse layout, use, and light output. Whether your warehouse flow is U-shaped, I-shaped, or L-shaped, as well as the type of work being conducted all impact the number and power of lights you’ll need. You want to get the right amount of light, without inadvertently making purchases you don’t need.
It’s easy to assume the product you already have is automatically the best one for your facility. But that isn’t necessarily the case. If you select high bay UFOs, simply because that’s what you already have, you could end up with hot spots that detract from the effect you’re trying to achieve. In this case, linear lights would serve you better.
Contact our team to learn more about the right combination of light products to purchase for your warehouse.
Getting the Most Light for Your Space–Optimizing for Lumens Per Dollar
Your operating costs are a big part of your competitive advantage. You can’t afford to use lights that use more energy than necessary or interrupt productivity with excessive replacement procedures, which take a lot of time in a warehouse setting. Getting the best return on your investment means not only selecting the best products for the long-term, but understanding how your decisions impact your overall costs, the space, and your workforce.
Understanding the Hard Costs of Warehouse Lighting (and How to Reduce Them)
Your operating costs are a big part of your competitive advantage. You can’t afford to use lights that use more energy than necessary or interrupt productivity with excessive replacement procedures, which take a lot of time in a warehouse setting. Getting the best return on your investment means not only selecting the best products for the long-term, but understanding how your decisions impact your overall costs, the space, and your workforce.
Lower Electricity & Energy Usage
Energy is a large cost for most warehouses, sometimes accounting for as much as 15% of operating budgets. LEDs have long been the clear choice for energy efficient lighting, but many facilities managers don’t realize how far the technology has come in recent years. Over the past decade, the cost of LED lights has plummeted, while they have become even more energy efficient.
Use LED Motion Sensors to Reduce Energy Costs
Many warehouses are able to further reduce energy waste by using motion sensors, to ensure that the lights only power the space when people are present. These sensors can be installed at different locations throughout your facility, leaving auxiliary lights on and only providing amplified coverage during working hours. This creates the safest, most efficient environment.
Spend Less on Materials
LEDs last longer, which means fewer replacements. The durability of these products further reduces the number of replacements. Not only that, you can often achieve the same level of brightness with fewer fixtures and bulbs. The savings here is not only in purchasing and replacing fewer products. Any time you can accomplish the same goal with fewer pieces, the system becomes easier to monitor and maintain.
Reduce Labor Costs
The lifespan of your light bulbs and fixtures can easily inject friction into your day-to-day operations. In a facility with hundreds of HID lights, the time required to fix the situation can add up fast. By the time someone even notices a burned out bulb, they have to call maintenance to identify the type, retrieve it, and clear the space. This interrupts the area’s workflow to access the fixture to change it out. And that’s assuming a replacement bulb is easily on hand.
These sporadic intrusions eat away at productivity and revenue, and can only be mitigated by high quality LED bulbs with longer lifespans. Traditional HIDs can also cause discoloration in floors or walls over time, which requires touch ups.
At SuperBright LEDs, our products come with a warranty to further protect your maintenance and material costs.
Lowering Soft Costs in Your Warehouse with LED Lighting
Higher Productivity and a Better Safety Record/Reduced Lost Time
When workers can see everything they need to, they’re much less likely to miss something, like the details on a product label or when a piece of inventory is due out for shipment. Clean, even lighting makes it possible for warehouse workers to find what they need right away, and get it where it needs to go, without making mistakes or misreading labels. It also keeps workers more alert, which in turn helps them stay safe to reduce injuries and lost time.
Forklift and other vehicle drivers need to be able to confidently avoid the feet of their colleagues, as well as avoid even small bumps to products that could send things crashing down. The result is not only lost time and lower morale, but lost revenue and forklift downtime or repair costs. Additional lighting on forklifts are another excellent defense against these types of issues.
Get The Best Industrial Warehouse Fixtures For Every Part Of Your Space
Warehouse Lighting Requirements and OSHA Standards
Your goal in your warehouse is to ensure that you give workers the correct amount of light for your operations. OSHA has specific standards, and there are also industry best practices as well.
Lumens
Lumens measure the peak total calculated output—sometimes called intensity or brightness—of a light.
Foot Candles
Foot-candles show the available light per surface area at a specific distance from a light source. As a unit, one foot-candle is equal to one lumen per square foot.
Watts
Watts refers to the amount of energy used by the light.
The height of your ceiling is a major factor in selecting the best products for your needs. High bay LED lights are a great solution for tall ceilings (20 feet or higher). Meanwhile, LED panel and troffer lights, strip light fixtures, or recessed downlighting are logical choices for more common ceiling heights.
Applying this Info to Properly Light Your Warehouse
There’s no one-size-fits all approach to getting the right amount of foot candles in each part of your warehouse. For example, more light will be required for highly active areas, or places with significant shelving or storage that require navigation.
Remember areas like stairwells, which actually represent a large portion of workplace accidents. Adequate lighting in the bathrooms and customer pick-up areas are also important to consider. Docking areas will need extensive illumination, because the constant movement of people and goods makes this location especially prone to accidents. These LED linear strip lights work well in stairwells, because it can be challenging to install overhead lights in such narrow spaces.
Contact our team of industrial lighting experts today for warehouse lighting product recommendations.
Brightness and Light Quality for Warehouses
Use Cool White
Light comes in a variety of colors or shades of white, which is referred to as its temperature. Generally, the best color temperature for commercial applications is a natural looking or cool white. This color range keeps your workforce alert, while helping them avoid eye strain, which is why you will find most of our industrial products fall within that color temperature range.
Tunable LED Lights allow you to select the best color temperature for your facility, which means you can ensure you always have the right type of light for the people in your space. While new, this technology is going to have a significant impact on future lighting.
Despite these clear benefits, LED lights are still the minority of high-bay lighting systems in the U.S. You don’t want to miss out on having the most lean, modern approach to every part of your operations, including lighting. Contact one of our warehouse lighting experts to learn how you can get the most lumens per dollar.
Make the Most with Commercial Accounts
With over 100,000 square feet of warehouse space located in St. Louis, Missouri, all our products ship directly from us. Allowing for quick delivery of products anywhere you or your customers need. All orders are carefully checked and safely packaged before leaving our warehouse.
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We are here to help whether you are changing one bulb or updating all of your lightings.