Cost-Saving Ideas for Lighting Your Gallery

Good lighting can make or break your gallery or showroom.

by David Steinitz

aving been a lighting consultant for almost 30 years, I've had the unusual opportunity to design lighting systems for the same retail space more than once, in some instances, more than twice in the same year. This has given me the opportunity to understand how different types of lighting can affect sales in roughly the same space. And I've come to the conclusion that simple is better.

Since most of the showrooms and galleries I've worked in do not sell lighting (with some exceptions), the equipment I choose for them needs to be effective, but the fixtures themselves need to fade into the background.

With this in mind, I'm able to save money on looks while increasing the budget for additional lighting equipment. When feasible, I reuse existing lighting components such as track lighting systems left behind by the previous tenant. There're a large number of track systems out there and not all of them are interchangeable. If you're lucky enough to find a track head left behind, take it to your local lighting showroom or have your electrical contractor take it to your local electrical distributor to see who made the system.

But before you decide to reuse existing equipment, you must understand what type of lamp the fixtures are designed for. Remember that the last tenant most likely chose that fixture because it was "cheap" and the bulbs were easy to purchase almost anywhere. Be aware, how-ever, that some cheap bulbs may cost you more to
operate.

The cost of operation is defined by a few items. The first and most important is the added load put on your air conditioning to remove the heat produced by each light. Remember that if your customers are uncomfortable, they'll lose their desire to shop if the sales space is too hot or too cold.

The second consideration involves a few factors — ceiling height, skylights, amount (size) of available power and most importantly, cost per watt of electricity used. This last item will have an effect on your bottom line since it's incurred every month. Your goal is to keep this number as low as possible without sacrificing the light levels needed to show your merchandise in its best light.

Find the right lighting type for your work

Although fluorescent lighting is very inexpensive to run and has a long lamp life, it produces a kind of light that works well in mass merchandising but is a poor choice for works of art. For craft selling purposes, fluorescent lighting would work best as fill light.

We would use it as a bounce light to add to the ambiance of the showroom by lighting the ceiling and giving the illusion of having skylights — but you must use the proper color to achieve this effect. I've always used fluorescent lamps that have a color temperature of 4100 degrees. That means that the color of light from the lamp most closely resembles the color of light coming from the northern sky (a kind of blue white) that makes all colors (including skin tones) look as natural as can be under artificial light.

Get more light from less wattage

Remember, you're paying for every watt of power you use. Why not trade out one 100-watt flood and install two 50-watt fixtures? Now you're using the same amount of power but getting over twice the amount of light on your merchandise and less on the surrounding floor. This is achieved by using low voltage light bulbs. The most popular bulb out there is the MR16, and rightfully so.

A 50-watt MR16 can produce almost 125 watts of light. How can this be? Look at your car headlights. On average, your high beams use only 85 watts per lamp. I'm always amazed at how much light my headlights put out on a dark road. Try it and see. So little wattage, so much light. Think for a second, when was the last time you changed a headlight?
Because the filament is so much shorter at 12 volts than a filament for a 110-volt light bulb, you can make a smaller and more precise reflector and therefore use all the light the filament can put out. The added advantage of these small precise reflectors is that you can get many different beam spreads — narrow spots, spots, narrow floods, floods and super floods, just to name a few.

No longer are 12-foot ceilings something to worry about as you can use a narrow flood (known in the lighting industry as an EXZ) and get more light on your merchandise and less on the floors.

A lot of you may already have this type of lighting system installed. You can benefit from nothing more than a relamping of your existing track heads.

Over the years I've tried every type of 12- and 24-volt lamp and, as of this printing, have found only a few that work well in the showrooms or galleries. As much as I try to not promote any one manufacturer, I've found that the MR16 lamp type from GE, known as the Constant Color Series, has proven to be the best bet for both color rendering and lamp life (approximately 6,000 hours) and has the added advantage of almost no light out the back of the bulb. This is a plus for galleries and showrooms that already have open back track fixtures. This will keep customers from noticing more of your lighting and less of your displays (remember, you don't sell lighting systems).

For those of you who really get into lighting design, there are also accessories available that will fit most track fixtures such as louvers (keeps the glare way down when the light source is in the middle of the gallery) and different types of glass lenses including colored glass (not recommended when lighting artwork) and even framing projectors (a device that makes a perfect adjustable square of light on art).

Lastly, and most importantly, the MR16 lamp is designed to absorb the heat you would feel from regular floods and send it out the back of the bulb. This means that by using this bulb over your sales counter, you can have lots of light and feel no heat. To you, the owner, this means an increase in productivity because of increased light levels without the uncomfortable heat associated with that increase.

Good lighting can make or break your gallery or showroom. No matter how beautiful the crafts and displays you have, if I cannot see your merchandise in a comfortable, bright environment, you'll see this on your bottom line. Go out and fix your lighting system before the dark days of winter are upon us. You'll see the difference the same day you make the change.

David Steinitz is owner of F.I.R.E./L.T.D., a Los Angeles-based lighting design firm.

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