Lower your operating costs. Increase sales.

Good energy-efficient lighting puts your products in the best light - to maximize interest and sales - while costing less to operate. You can achieve these results when you know the best places to use energy-efficient lighting, the impact of color, and the optimal use of daylighting. This page provides information on all these elements of energy-efficient retail lighting.

Where is it best to use energy-efficient lighting? Because traditional retail lighting tends to use inefficient incandescent and halogen fixtures, you can significantly lower your energy costs by limiting your use of these fixtures to spot and spark lighting. Then, use energy-efficient lamps for remaining merchandise lighting and for general illumination.

Here are some guidelines about specific retail applications:

General/ambient lighting: These lights provide the base lighting for your store, so they should provide a good level of footcandles. General lighting illuminates aisles and can be used to highlight product displays. There are many types of fixtures and lamps available.

Track lighting: Ceiling mounted or pendant tracks provide a lot of flexibility, making it easy to change your lights as you modify displays. Energy-saving compact fluorescent fixtures are becoming increasingly available as a replacement to incandescent track lighting. Where a crisp white light is preferable, choose halogen energy-saving lamps for track fixtures. Be careful to limit halogens to essential applications, because they use twice the energy as compact fluorescents and last half as long.

Flood lamps: New compact fluorescent lamps are specifically designed to replace incandescent lamps in wall-wash flood fixtures. By using these lamps, you'll not only cut your energy use in half , but you'll also reduce your maintenance costs, because compact fluorescent lamps last as much as five times as long as incandescent lamps and twice as long as "long-life" halogen lamps.

Daylighting, with skylights and windows, can increase retail sales 40%, according to a recent study of 108 stores operated by a chain retailer. When you use daylight, you'll create an environment that your customers will want to visit more often and for longer periods. You'll also decrease your electric lighting needs and reduce your energy bills. The most cost-effective time to incorporate daylighting is when you're designing a new building.

More information on daylighting.

 Download your Energy-Efficient Retail Skylighting Guide.

Learn about the impact of color in a retail setting. When modifying the lights in your store or selecting fixtures for a new store, pay attention to the lamp color rendering and color temperature. Subtle light color differences can have a dramatic impact on how you and your staff feel in the space, upon the image your store conveys, the mood of your customers, and the accurate representation of your products. Look for lamps with a CRI (Color Rendering Index) greater that 80. Then, take note of the degrees Kelvin (K) of a lamp. This measures the warm or cool appearance of light. A 3000 K lamp produces a "warmer" color than 4100 K. Incandescent or halogen lamps typically are warm sources of light. Coordinate the color temperature of your energy-efficient and traditional lighting for the best effect.