When it comes to lighting areas where color accuracy is crucial, such as portrait studios, retail stores, hospitals, medical and commercial offices, display cases, and warehouses, a high color-rendering index (CRI) is key. CRI refers to how accurately a light source reveals the true colors of objects, people, and surroundings and involves a distinct testing method with comparisons to incandescent light or daylight.

The spectral graph below can be helpful in understanding the advantage of high-CRI light sources. Lights with a low CRI will show fewer colors while high-CRI lights cover more of the spectrum. A light source’s ability to show more colors increases its accuracy in revealing the true colors of people, objects, and surroundings.

can light, linear light, or other high-CRI bulb or fixture. Lights with a CRI of 80 or higher are considered to show colors most accurately. The photo below shows how different CRIs can affect colors and skin tone.

Office spaces are a place for color temperature of 5600k, we don’t need to quite match this. A level between 5000k to 6000k will do fine for an office environment to prevent sleepiness.

Exposure to non-artifical light (aka, natural light from the sun) is known to this post by luxreview.com that should lead you in the right direction.

From there, ensuring you know all of the rules in your area will be the best route to ensuring you aren’t breaking any laws with an improper lighting system. The added benefit to following these rules is you can drastically reduce any possible liabilities you may incur if you had otherwise ignored these rules. So, we find it best to follow them!

Additional considerations

Not only are the above tips important to consider, but strongly considering LED office light technology can prove to supply the above benefits along with the following:

Energy savings.

It’s not uncommon for companies to list of 9 ways LED beats fluorescent on our blog, it’s certainly worth checking out.

Longer lifespans.

Longer life spans by 2 to 3 times is very common when converting to LED from other lighting technologies, just as much as its very common for the insane energy savings we talked about above.

This has two mains benefits which we always talk about: the less often need to buy replacement tubes as well as fewer maintenance costs to pay someone to replace those lights. We like to think of the second as an indirect way longer lifespans saves you money, and it’s certainly a great benefit.

Conclusion

We’ve not only covered tips to consider when implementing a better lighting system into your office but also why LED might be a great option for doing so while also reducing overhead costs. Hopefully, by following these tips you find your way to a more productive office and lower overhead.

The commercial electricity for HVAC systems accounts for about 50 percent of a building’s total energy consumption. Being one of the major energy costs in a manufacturing facility, it dominates the building’s peak electricity demand. As such, improving the system’s efficiency, in order to cut energy costs, should be every facility manager’s priority.

The energy consumption depends on the climate, comfort preferences, building design, insulation, the timing of use, the size of the HVAC system, heat generated by electrical equipment, and other site-specific factors.

Building owners and businesses can reduce their energy costs by combining several measures that increase an HVAC system’s efficiency while reducing the demand for heating and cooling.

When selecting HVAC systems, pay attention to its design and controls. Components such as motors can impact heavily on the running costs of equipment because some are usually oversized to meet peak demands. An ideal system should have more variable speed control, inverter controls, economizers, demand controlled ventilation, advanced sensors and monitoring, as well as superior diagnostics. In addition, the system should be the appropriate size; not too small or oversized.

By controlling and running the HVAC motors at speeds based on the heating or cooling needs, consumers are able to realize energy savings of between 30 and 50 percent compared to the conventional constant speed operations. Most manufacturers prefer newer algorithm-driven smart microprocessors.

These provide a refined speed control that responds to the changing load in the building. Instead of using on and off cycling, these controls adjust the system according to the actual cooling or heating needs of the facility. More functions can be added through software add-ons as opposed to costly hardware upgrades.

Some of the ways to optimize HVAC systems include the use of thermostats and control systems, locating the HVAC unit in the best place possible, and modifying the ventilation and distribution. These are discussed more fully below:

A HVAC energy audit helps in identifying the operational deficiencies, hence allowing the building manager to take the necessary measures to enhance performance. The audit is often necessary because it helps in determining the amount of energy use, maintenance and upgrade requirements.

Consumers can then reduce their energy costs by optimizing, replacing or retrofitting the HVAC system to become more energy efficient. This not only increases efficiency and reduces the amount of commercial electricity for the HVAC system, but also improves the air quality.

via Wikimedia

2. Ricky Martin wins Song of the Year

Puerto-Rican heart throb Ricky Martin played a huge role in bringing Latin pop to the American music scene during the 41st Grammy Awards show in February of 1999. In December he was rewarded again at the Billboard Music Awards by winning Song of the Year for his hit single “Livin’ La Vida Loca.”