Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1408886
Mara Grande LED chandelier from Robinson Lighting & Bath. BL flexFORM N2 from BL Lighting. S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 | 39 Lighting It may have been a dark time for the lighting world this past year, but things are starting to look a little brighter by STACEY MCLACHLAN C hecking in on the lighting industry is always an illuminating activ- ity. Even through times of turmoil, technological advancements and project development carry on. A portrait of the industry today is one of both darkness (like supply chain struggles) and light (like incredible LED advance- ments that make almost any application possible), but it's clear that the future for the world of lighting is looking bright. DEL AY AND DISRUPTION It hasn't been an easy year and a half for those in the lighting business, let's say that much. While 2020 threw the entire construction and home improvement industry into a supply chain spiral, businesses scrambled to pivot and survive. In 2021, as the world took a turn towards a more opti- mistic outlook, though, many in the business found themselves still waiting for normalcy to return. Jim Ormshaw, product specialist for Robinson Lighting & Bath, has been waiting on a container of product since January 2021 to arrive. He's watched from afar as U.S. colleagues attended the big annual lighting trade show, saw shipping container prices jump up in price by 450 percent or more, and tried in vain to get a sense of new products over Zoom calls. "The whole process has just been really disrupted," says Ormshaw. Freight experts are saying that the supply chain won't right itself until likely the first quarter of 2022. So in the meantime, lighting suppliers are stuck with the inventory they have, crossing their fingers that long-ago orders that have been lost at port in the scramble will eventually show up. The chaos has meant that costs for the lighting products that are available have skyrocketed, typi- cally being passed down to the buyer or end-user. That's if the product you want is actually in stock, of course. Ormshaw notes that builders of multi-family projects are in particularly hot water: "When you've planned whole buildings based on a certain light, how do you make that switch at those quantities?" Ormshaw used to get containers of merchandise delivered like clockwork every two months; now he's lucky if it's every 20 weeks. His advice to developers, architects, designers, and homeowners is this: "If the stock is available, secure it. Don't wait three or four weeks. If you're building stuff for the fall, put your orders in now – deliveries are four to five months out." Despite the disruptions, construction carries on, however. And some things – esthetic trends – seem to be steady-as-she goes. "Black is still the hot colour," says Ormshaw. "It's the number one fixture request for light but also for faucets for bath and kitchen." Gold, too, continues to be a top choice for light fix- tures big and small. Perhaps because of the scarcity of product, oversized pendant lights are taking top billing over multi-pendant-light designs. "We're see- ing people selecting singles, instead of putting in two or three smaller ones," notes Ormshaw. FLEXIBLE FUNCTION In our post-pandemic world of design, control, for any space, is key. "The trend that we are seeing for both residential and commercial use is fix- tures that are easily and heavily controllable," says Ben Rajewski, electrical team lead for Williams Engineering. "Clients want the ability to be able to change how their space is lit without buying new fix- tures." Luckily, this is now more easily done than ever. Cost effective fixtures come with the ability to change their colour temperature output as well as their lumen output, via fixture control or dimmer switches. "At the higher end, fixtures are now being controlled to match the natural arc of colour temper- ature that we see outdoors during the day," he says. You don't need to have a major commercial proj- ect or even a multi-family home to take advantage of these high-tech controls or options. "The scalabil- ity of lighting controls is vastly increased ranging from small to large spaces and various levels," says Emma Dodimead, marketing and personnel manager for Nemetz (S/A) & Associates. Home auto- mation has changed the game, allowing flexibility of lighting control like never before, in combination with other technologies. Similarly, the use of media walls for specific applications are gaining more traction depending on size and scale of project. It's a democratization of technology that's making exciting uses possible for residential and commercial spaces alike. LOVE FOR LEDS LED technology continues to evolve by leaps and bounds. Today's LEDs range from "tunable white and dim to warm," says Dodimead. "As LED technologies continue to improve, they are becoming more efficient, increasingly powerful, and provide better colour rendering, in smaller pack- ages than ever before," adds Jennifer Mattson of BL Lighting. "This opens up more possibilities for us to create luminaires that beautifully transform archi- tecture into luminous surfaces, and I'm sure we'll continue to see more of this in the years to come." The company's BL flexFORM N2 is one of the world's thinnest and most powerful LED solutions, with a tiny profile just 4.5-millimetres wide; its new slim-format BL neonVIEW features a flexible sili- cone encapsulation that is very flexible, perfect for indoor or outdoor use. And then, there's the mini- mal dimensions of the BL flexFORM Dot-Free, which Mattson says, "provides light in pure form." Recent technological advancements allow BL to use incred- ibly small chips that create a highly uniform light even at close distances – no additional lens diffusers or channels required. Bright Futures