In this series of articles, Thomas will be looking at the fixture that has done more to impact interior lighting in almost all architectural sectors than anything else; that has become the ultimate symbol of lighting ubiquity; that has done more to influence end-users, specifiers and installers alike that there is only one way to illuminate a space. Thomas will be looking at the downlight, and how we’ve come to find ourselves in this doleful, unimaginative, situation.
This opening article looks at the way that manufacturers were drawn into a world where every solution led to the same place – a matrix of holes in the ceiling.
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Step One: choosing the downlight that everyone wants
This conundrum has been banging around in my head for some time now.
Simply put, how do we best get across to a new domestic client that they should be taking a more informed approach to their downlight purchase; that the bulk-buy products they found on Amazon (10 downlights for under fifty quid – other purchasing platforms are available) brings a hidden cost with it – and it’s a cost that they WILL have to pay. Or has this argumentative horse already bolted?
Before we get any deeper into this, I should acknowledge that the client has at least demonstrated some consideration of the matter. After all, if they’re talking to me, then at least they’re talking a designer, which is encouraging.
I’d also like to recognise the fact that it wasn’t that long ago when our industry was reeling out (to these non-lighting folk) light sources that involved applying 240v to a a piece of wire in a glass bulb, and the only creative options was the style of shade, and whether it was a pendant, wall light or table light. Hardly surprising that any recessed LED downlight looks ‘tres moderne; tres chic’.
But why are we talking about 10 downlights for fifty quid?
Let’s acknowledge that the £5 LED downlight has taken around 30 years to arrive, driven by multiple factors. I’d like to talk about a few of them.
There been a long-standing and well-established drive for energy efficiency, going back to the oil crisis of the last century. I could wax on about T12 and T8 fluorescent tubes and the later compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) . . . but I’ve managed to just about stop myself in time before that rant could get going.
And so the compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) begat the LED. Mind you, it took a Nobel prize in 2014 and some clever science to create a truly-workable white LED. All thanks to Shiji Nakamura and his colleagues for that. But let’s step back by almost a decade.
It took a few brave, and well-informed, ‘early adopters’ to see the potential of the LED and to provide the necessary R&D investment to produce a credible commercial LED light source; one that offered decent colour rendering, a range of colour temperatures and significantly better efficacy (lm/W) than its halogen antecedent.
By 2010, many of the ‘big players’ in the lighting industry had created a consortium called Zhaga, with the sole endeavour to create (and control) industry standards for LED luminaires. But the stars truly aligned when tungsten GLS lamps and the halogen equivalents were effectively phased out and these lamps were banned in the UK in 2019. The launch of the LED filament lamp at the Hong Kong Lighting Fair in 2017 was a true game-changer.
So, bye-bye to the tungsten GLS. After 141 years, well done Sir Joseph Swan, sounds like a bloody good cricket score if nothing else.
Now I apologize for that opening ramble, but I trust you spotted a few key points.
‘Early Adopter’.
If you are the owner of a lighting company with all the incumbent overheads and an established product offer and client base, then something new – and unproven – is understandably something you might prefer to leave well alone. It’s a given disruptor of business-as-usual.
And if you fancied dipping a toe into LEDs (and what choice did you have), this meant bringing together and understanding a quartet of factors, 1) the LED source; 2) it’s thermal management (the heatsink); 3) the power supply or driver; 4) the optical system, reflector or lens. Oh – and you still need to build the fixture.
From personal experience, putting such a bundle together isn’t easy. All the various elements required in those early days came with significant minimum order quantities (MOQ), which meant that the component suppliers had the technology but had yet to press the button themselves. Your Minimum Order Quantity became their production run; we were all guinea pigs together.
Back to ZHAGA.
The Zhaga consortium set out to promote a kind of equivalent to the ES lampholder for the LED. It created a set of agreed parameters that enabled components from different manufacturers to work together seamlessly, thereby simplifying the design and manufacturing of luminaires, thus reducing cost and improving usability.
But, as we know, the devil is in the detail.
With Zhaga and what came after, lighting manufacture had a readymade blueprint; a tool-kit of bits to create a new world of lighting applications. And in a highly competitive market the next question for the fixture manufacturer was, inevitably, “what luminaire configuration will bring me the most business? What I need is a good all-rounder – and that sounds like a downlight to me. But which LED manufacturer will offer the best spec for the best price; ditto for the heatsink, and for the power supply and optical system. Oh, and I wonder if we can put all of that into a housing that we already have?” Many sleepless nights ensue.
China.
China sits at the hub of the global micro-electronics industry. It owns about 85% of the World’s rare earths, without which there will be no LED, or lithium batteries, and a load of other essential stuff. So ‘well done’ to the Chinese for being the Early Adopter of early adopters, working on a mammoth scale. Heatsinks – tick; power supplies – tick; optical systems – tick. And let’s not mention finished products, gleaned from careful ‘market research’.
And when you’re the world leader in production it means that you’re manufacturing at scale and at a price that most local and regional markets cannot match. At least – can’t match in terms of price. Remember that thing I said earlier about “what I need is a good all-rounder – and that sounds like a downlight to me”? A global producer doesn’t need to produce products that are ‘interesting’; it just needs to sell homogenised product at a low price.
Companies across the world are totally reliant on Chinese components and finished products. It’s why the President of the USA has created his own national emergency in order to strengthen its domestic internal market position; better the LEDs that you’re not yet making in the USA than the readily-available components created halfway around the world. We’ll see how that goes.
But hang on a minute.
Every town across the country has an electrical wholesaler, DIY outlet and Uncle Tom Cobley store with a ‘here you go madam, a nice all-rounder downlight suitable for every room’. And not even they can compete with an online offer of 10 downlights for £50.
So how do we compete, or do we simply begin the process of swimming to the bottom?
Here’s the thing – No one’s asking the important questions:
- where and what are you lighting?
- what lighting effects are you looking for?
- how do you want the lighting to work?
Opportunities are being lost when no one asks what it’ll be like to live under such downlights; do they deliver a decent colour rendition of the fabrics and furnishings; how warm (or cool) does the light want to be; is there a glare problem, can the fixtures be adjusted. And – the ultimate question, are downlights the right solution anyway?
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Maybe its time for the second in this series of commentaries on the usage and abusage of downlighting!