Reception lighting – first impressions count

Posted on 26th September 201429th March 2022 by Andrew Evangelidis

Last updated on 29th March 2022

Endon Phantom 7 Light Chandelier - Polished Chrome

For businesses big and small, first impressions count. Whether you’re looking to impress clients or the public, the reception area provides the first opportunity.

Some thought should be given to lighting when planning a reception. Harsh, bright lights make visitors feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, whereas poor or dim lighting projects lack of care or success. The right lighting will bring the best out of furniture and furnishings and create an agreeable ambience.

Reception lighting for small businesses and hotels

Smaller businesses or hotels may be limited in floor space, but even small reception areas can make a big impression with the right lighting. The main risk is the danger of overdoing it: large, ostentatious light fittings may hint at a healthy balance sheet, but they will overpower a small reception area and everything in it.

The ideal reception lighting for a small business reflects the strengths it has to offer (usually intimacy and personal attention), but will also be smart enough to make it look an efficient, conscientious business. Let’s look at examples from Lyco’s wide range of reception lighting options for small businesses.

Small hotel reception lighting

Pendant Lights

The beautiful pendant adds a touch of traditional elegance to any reception area, with many to choose from it’s important to work out what will suit decor and represent your brand values at the same time. Most pendants are height adjustable to suit any ceiling height.

Ceramic Wall Lights

Wall lighting is useful for filling bare areas of wall and creating a welcoming ambience. It also acts as a secondary source of illumination, with diffuse light bouncing off nearby surfaces. The ceramic wall light can be left bare or painted to suit surroundings.

Small office reception lighting

Gold & Copper Pendants

If you want a funky, modern reception idea that makes an impression, a gold or copper pendant give you exactly that. The stylish, contemporary range is eye catching and on trend. Choose a Decorative Filament Light Bulb to add the perfect finishing touch with head-turning looks.

Edit Wall Light

The uncomplicated simplicity of the Edit wall light makes it a versatile all-rounder that will suit most small office reception areas. It uses 40W small screw bulb, and the white plaster finish will complement most offices.

Reception lighting for large businesses and hotels

The larger your reception area, the greater the canvas is to create a lasting impression. You could use discreet wall fittings for added mood. Make the most of high ceilings by installing an eye-catching chandelier or decorative pendant.

As with small businesses, upgrading the existing lighting in a large business’s reception area can have a dramatic visual impact without you having to change anything else. It offers an affordable upgrade option. Let’s look at some ideas:

Large hotel reception lighting

Zaragoza 3 Light Pendant

This striking ceiling light creates a favourable first impression in any reception area with its classy black-ridged fabric shade and attractive polished chrome fixings. An opal glass diffuser ensures a smooth spread of downward light from this large pendant, which comes in a choice of colours and can be easily co-ordinated with other items in the same stylish range.

Phantom 7 Light Pendant

There’s nothing like a striking centrepiece light to make an immediate impact in any reception area. With its mix of polished chrome and white fabric, the height-adjustable Phantom 7 light fitting adds a touch of class wherever it’s installed. To complete a great first impression, there are also co-ordinated wall lights available.

Head office reception lighting

Lucide Talowe LED Pendant

The Edit Wyndham LED Pendant is a large aluminium statement light with white painted shade and adjustable height. With cool white integrated LEDs, it is both energy saving and contemporary. It also emits 2340 lumens of light, so it’s perfect for reception area atmosphere lighting.

Table Lamps

Add a Table Lamp to create a more homely feel to an area. With many finishes to choose from our extensive range, you are sure to find something to suit your decor.

Save money by switching to LED

Switching from inefficient lighting to retrofit LED light bulbs has a dramatic impact on any business’s lighting costs. Depending on the size of business, annual savings may extend into tens of thousands of pounds. An LED bulb uses 80 to 90% less energy than a filament bulb and it’s also exceptionally long lasting. Running and maintenance costs are drastically reduced.

As inefficient lighting technologies are gradually phased out LED light bulbs are becoming increasingly common. They are now available at a wide range of price points, including many at under £10. By choosing LED for a reception and any other area of your business, a return on investment is guaranteed.

For more advice, inspiration and news take a look at our Lighting Advice section.

Andrew Evangelidis Head of Buying

Andrew is an experienced buying professional who takes an entrepreneurial approach to identify new lighting solutions and ensure Lyco have first-to-market ranges for our customers. Having previously worked for well known brands such as Wickes, Carphone Warehouse and Toys R Us, Andrew has now turned his hand to sourcing commercial lighting and ensure our customers receive top brand quality products at marketing leading prices. He manages a team of commercial and decorative buyers who travel the world finding new products that our customers don’t even know they need yet.

Outdoor lights for staff safety

Posted on 15th September 201427th January 2023 by Andrew Evangelidis

Last updated on 27th January 2023

Lighting affects our working lives in several ways. It has a major effect on our health and mental welfare and may protect life and limb in dangerous manual jobs. At either end of a working day employees enter or leave a workplace. It’s essential they’re able to do this without risk of accident or physical threat. Outdoor lights for staff safety deserve close attention. This article points you towards specific products to help keep employees safe.

Outdoor car parks

European Standard 12464-2 gives useful advice on car park lighting. It recommends surface illuminance of at least 5 lux for car parks with low traffic and 20 lux for busy parking zones. The size of the car park will influence your lighting choice. A light mounted high up covers more ground and avoids glare, but it needs to emit more light to maintain intensity. The distance covered by a floodlight is roughly twice its mounting height.

The Dextra 400W Metal Halide Floodlight suits a high mounting position. This fitting produces far more light than a 400W halogen equivalent. Good-quality colour rendering makes car recognition easier and aids crime detection. Our choice of metal halide floodlights caters for many applications.

For large areas of lighting, there is the Dextra 400W SON Floodlight. This floodlight is energy efficient and throws out even more light than the 400W metal halide lamp, but its colour rendering is poorer. Nonetheless, it allows some colour recognition and is suitable for many outdoor purposes.

Covered car parks

Covered car parks have different lighting needs to open parking spaces. They are trickier to navigate, and their hemmed-in nature causes a sense of unease if poorly lit. The psychological effect of lighting is important; staff should feel safe as well as being as safe as possible. Suggested lux levels are 75 lux for driving lanes, entrances, exits and parking bays; a minimum 100 lux for pedestrian areas; and 150 lux for ramps, corners, and junctions.

A good choice for covered car parks is the Eterna IP65 T8 Weatherproof Fluorescent Batten. This inexpensive light source is dust-tight and resistant to jets of water. LED substitutes for fluorescent tubes last longer and are 30-40% more energy efficient. The Robus Vulcan LED Batten is an example. These lights are ideal for tunnels or sheltered paths, too.

Paths

Paths need good lighting for the safety and security of staff. An illuminance level of between 5 and 20 lux is recommended. The Eterna Outdoor Wall Light includes a photocell to trigger light at dusk and is suitable for a path alongside a building. The eye-lid design helps to reduce glare and protect visibility.

Any obstacle or change of direction along a path demands good lighting. Adequate corner lighting helps prevent accidents. The Eterna Well Corner Light comes with a special mount to allow this. It is wise to keep building extremities amply lit for reasons of personal security, especially when publicly accessible.

For brick buildings, a discreet way of lighting adjoining paths is with brick lights such as the JCC Fresco Low Energy Brick Light. This ensures enough lighting at ground level while also cutting out glare.

Post lights such as the modern Edit Detroit LED Post allow safe passage along isolated paths. Floodlights are useful for lighting large outside spaces and provide a safe environment for all employees and visitors.

Bike sheds

Fluorescent tubes are fine in bike sheds, but the Eterna 11W IP65 LED Bulkhead also satisfies. This compact fitting has a built-in photocell to trigger light automatically at dusk.

Security Camera

Security cameras deters criminals by capturing, relaying and saving video footage. You can remotely access cameras through a computer, tablet or smartphone. Lyco sells a wide range of security camera to keep your business and employees safe.

Lux measurement

Lux is a unit of illumination equal to one lumen of light spread evenly over a 1m² surface. It measures light intensity at the surface plane. As the distance of a lamp increases, so does the surface area that it lights, while light intensity (lux) decreases.

There are various light calculators available on the Internet, but a lux meter offers a cheap and reliable means of ensuring sufficient light for any application inside or outside a workplace.

Further info

For advice on related topics, please look at our security lighting feature. Our outdoor light buying guide may also be helpful.

For more useful information and advice please take a look at our Lighting Advice section.

Andrew Evangelidis Head of Buying

Security lighting – protect your premises

Posted on 1st September 201419th October 2023 by Andrew Evangelidis

Last updated on 19th October 2023

Whether you’re safeguarding a home or a business premises, security lighting is one of the more effective measures you’ll take against unwanted visitors. Before investing in security, try briefly adopting a criminal mindset so you can identify vulnerable parts of your building. Look for easy areas of concealment near doors and windows and trim any trees or shrubs that offer a natural hiding place or obscure vision.

As well as good security lighting, consider installing alarms, full security systems, CCTV, perimeter fencing and warning signs. Ensure your locks are sturdy. Sliding glass doors are a common unlawful entry point into homes. To counteract this, they can be fitted with dowel rods, security sensors, and shatter alarms. Screws and washers are sometimes inserted to prevent such doors being hoisted from their frame.

Lyco stocks various products to help thwart intruders and vandals, but we’ll primarily discuss security lighting.

Sensors

There are two types of sensor typically used in outdoor security lights: PIR sensor and photocell (commonly called a dusk-to-dawn sensor).

The PIR sensor is essentially a motion sensor that detects changes in IR radiation. Any movement within a given range triggers light for a short, often adjustable duration.

A photocell measures ambient light levels and triggers light on and off at dusk and dawn, respectively. This creates the impression that a property may be occupied, acting as a useful deterrent.

Light technologies

All lighting technologies have particular advantages and disadvantages, which may affect your buying decision when choosing security lights. Here are some of the relevant factors:

Low-energy fluorescent lights are rarely used with PIR sensors because of their warm-up time, but this is less of an issue with dusk-to-dawn light sensors, where immediate bright light isn’t necessary. The ASD Horizon Bulkhead offers automatically tripped overnight lighting using an economical 2D fluorescent lamp.
LED lighting offers numerous advantages outdoors, including reliable low-temperature performance, immediate full-power light (useful with PIR sensors), resistance to shock or vibration, and a naturally directional output that reduces light pollution. The Selene Solar Spotlights, for instance, can light an area at a distance of 20 metres with minimal light wasted outside of the spotlight beam.
Sodium lamps are often used in security lighting. They offer incredible energy efficiency, though colour rendering is relatively poor. A SON lamp allows some identification of colour, while a SOX lamp produces a monochromatic light that forfeits colour but heightens human perception of contrast. The Dextra 400W SON Floodlight with Photocell lights very large outdoor areas with a performance that may easily exceed 120 lumens per watt. It is ideal for industrial areas, building perimeters and car parks.

Home security lights

Security lights for the home needn’t be expensive, either to buy or run. The Edit Coastal Sennen Wall Lantern is available with or without a PIR sensor. A PIR light is useful for legitimate entry into a home as well as deterring intruders, and it saves the expense of running a permanently switched fitting.

The Nemi Globe Wall Light uses a photocell to automatically light the outside of any home overnight and switch itself off in the morning. This fitting is IP44 rated, which is a good all-round specification for rain proofing and resistance to dust.

Lighting doesn’t get any cheaper to run than when it’s solar-powered, with LED development opening up a whole new market in this area. LEDs are a low-voltage light source, so they feed very efficiently off a solar-charged battery and need remarkably little power. The Evo15 Solar PIR Utility Light is a security light that is free to run and can be discreetly installed outside the home.

Business security lights

Though there aren’t any strict definitions, business security lights will often be plainer in design and stronger in output — different to residential lights in ways you’d expect. The ESP Nighthawk LED Security Floodlight with built-in PIR sensor is a robust example.

This 12W luminaire has a 10-metre, 160° range and projects a powerful 1100 lumens of light. Its Nichia LEDs have a mighty 91 lumens-per-watt output, which makes the manual override facility all the more attractive; this is an economical floodlight for general use, too. Nighthawk floodlights can be configured in a slave system, where multiple fittings are triggered by one PIR sensor or photocell.

Also from ESP is the Guard-Cam Security Floodlight, which not only lights up intruders with a powerful halogen lamp, but also records them with video or still images. An audio mode allows playback of a pre-recorded warning to say “you are being recorded by a security camera” and also has a barking dog option. You can even record your own politely phrased messages.

Security Camera

The presence of cameras is enough to dissuade most opportunist intruders from committing crime and gives any property owner peace of mind. Lyco sells a wide range of security cameras, including ESP Guardcam LED Security Floodlight with Camera. Infrared cameras are often used, which project invisible IR light to effectively see in the dark as well as functioning normally during the day.

Our CCTV security systems can be remotely monitored from PCs, tablets, or smartphones, with special apps available for iPhones or Android phones. Email alerts can also be set up, so you’ll immediately know if the security system has been set off.

Entry systems and locks

To supplement any security lighting or CCTV measures, Lyco offers a range of door entry systems, door locks, and bolts and padlocks. These help protect your property during normal hours of business as well as overnight.

A false sense of security

Most of us are guilty of occasionally leaving windows open, not bothering to switch on alarms, or concealing keys in obvious places. Contrary to the popular saying, criminals rarely return to the scene of the crime. Avoid making their job easy the first time round.

Take a look at our full security lighting range.

Looking for more news, inspiration and advice? Try our Lighting Advice section

Andrew Evangelidis Head of Buying

Month: September 2014

Reception lighting – first impressions count