Cutting Costs With Store Lighting Controls

Interview with Jeana Tuddenham, Neil Schroder & Frank Austin

Updating inefficient lighting and installing controls helps furniture retailers slash costs, meet sustainability goals, improve aesthetics and enhance worker safety.

The July/August edition of Furniture World presented numerous ways home furnishings retailers can embrace circular and sustainable practices. This time, we continue our coverage of sustainable facilities management with a discussion of store lighting with Jeana Tuddenham, President of Service Lamp Corp; Neil Schroder, Design Build Account Manager for ELA + Synergy; and Frank Austin, Manager of Energy Services, also at Service Lamp Corp.

Why Lighting Controls?

“The reasons why furniture retailers might want to install lighting control systems,” said Jeana Tuddenham, whose company supplies lighting fixtures, lighting controls, consulting services and lamps (bulbs), “are to help meet sustainability and carbon neutral goals and to cut electricity costs. Lighting in typical furniture stores is responsible for a significant portion of total electricity usage, so the savings can be substantial.

“For some stores, controls make sense; for others, they don’t. If you’re IKEA or City Furniture, controls make sense, but if you’re Joe’s Furniture Store with one 20,000-square-foot store, probably not.

“In most retail stores, with the exception of grocery stores with freezers and refrigerators, lighting accounts for about 53% of electric operating costs. But in furniture stores, it’s higher—due to all the tracks—bringing the average up to around 60% to 65%. If a store has converted to LED lighting and does it with controls, so that lighting is used when and where it’s needed, then the percentage will be lower.”

Do Controls Make Sense?

“Whenever retailers consider installing lighting controls for their showrooms, warehouses, administrative offices or exteriors,” added Schroder, who represents manufacturers of lighting fixtures and controls, “they are trying to find ways to reduce illumination. Dimming a 40-watt fixture by 50% saves 20 watts per hour. That relationship makes dimming a powerful way to produce cost savings.”

“Whenever retailers consider installing lighting controls for their showrooms, warehouses, administrative offices or exteriors,” added Schroder, who represents manufacturers of lighting fixtures and controls, “they are trying to find ways to reduce illumination. Dimming a 40-watt fixture by 50% saves 20 watts per hour. That relationship makes dimming a powerful way to produce cost savings.”

The question for retailers is determining where and when automatically dimming lighting makes sense. Service Lamp’s Frank Austin pointed out that “retailers face two conflicting goals. First, they want to reduce lighting levels to achieve the lowest operating costs. The second consideration, which trumps the first, is that shoppers must be able to view merchandise in a way that inspires them to buy. Showroom display lighting consumes the highest percentage of energy in any furniture store operation, but dimming the lights isn’t an option while shoppers are in the store. And for most stores, neither is harvesting daylight from windows or skylights.”

Small but Easy Savings

“However, there are other simple and inexpensive control options retailers can consider,” noted Austin.

“The worst thing that can happen regarding lighting in a furniture showroom with 2,000 15-watt or 20-watt track heads is for someone to close up the store at the end of the day and forget to turn them off. It also doesn’t make sense to fully illuminate showrooms when staff members are the only people in the store. We suggest installing a basic level of control that maintains a base showroom lighting level of about 10 foot-candles of illumination when employees are prepping in the morning or shutting down the store in the evening. That allows them to move around safely and do their work when showroom track lighting is turned off. Once the store opens to shoppers, the track lighting is set to provide maximum illumination automatically.”

"A dimmed fixture rated for 50,000 hours could last 70,000 or 80,000 hours due to minimizing the thermal load over time.”

Larger Savings

Tuddenham, Austin and Schroder agreed that for most furniture retailers, bigger opportunities to reduce energy usage lie beyond the showroom floor in the warehouse and back-of-the-house areas.

“That,” said Schroder, is where retailers can add controls to achieve savings while making these areas safe for employees and highly efficient.

“I recommend a high-low warehouse lighting strategy that automatically dims lighting to about 10% as a background level, saving maximum energy until someone enters the space. That avoids fixtures cycling on and off, which reduces the life of the small solid-state drivers found in LED fixtures or individual lamps. Keeping this background level of illumination also improves employee safety. For example, someone working behind a box scanning barcodes can easily find themselves in the dark should a sensor fail to see them. And then, of course, overnight, when the warehouse shuts down, the controls turn all the lights off. It’s a multi-layered approach.”

“For some stores, controls make sense; for others, they don’t. If you’re IKEA or City Furniture, controls are necessary, but if you’re Joe’s Furniture Store with one 20,000-square-foot stores, probably not.”

Old, Inefficient Warehouse Lighting

“In new furniture warehouse construction, more than likely, these capabilities are designed in.” Schroder continued. “When upgrading old, inefficient warehouse lighting from pressure sodium or metal halide to new, efficient LEDs, storeowners should consider adding warehouse lighting control occupancy capability to maximize their savings. There are three different levels:

• Level 1: Each fixture has a sensor programmed to adjust light dimming based on occupancy. It provides full illumination when it senses that a person or piece of equipment has entered an area.



• Level 2: These are fixtures with sensors that can be grouped. For example, should an order picker enter a row with racks on either side, all the fixtures on one side are programmed to turn on, then dim that side when that picker leaves. This balances safety considerations with energy efficiency.

• Level 3: The next level adds more technology—an app that calculates energy savings and controls HVAC systems and lighting. Smart systems anticipate energy needs and adjust systems to ensure optimal efficiency, safety and customer comfort. They are data-driven, set-it-and-forget-it systems featuring dashboards and sophisticated granular reporting.

“Smart systems anticipate energy needs and adjust systems to ensure optimal efficiency, safety and customer comfort.”

Payback Period

“Converting to LED always makes sense,” Austin explained, “ but deciding to replace or upgrade lighting systems with controls most often depends on estimates of return on investment. We use software that factors in the cost of various upgrades, utility rebates, tax reductions, local energy costs and other considerations.

“My experience is that if there’s a three-year or faster payback, 70% of retailers will install controls. If the payback period is four years, that number goes down to about 30%.

Outdoor Controls: “Quality outdoor lighting has long-term positive effects on retail furniture store businesses,” added Tuddenham. “I’m talking about lighting building exteriors, including entryways and parking lots. When shoppers enter a store, it’s part of the experience, a prelude to seeing beautifully lit home furnishings.

“A large majority of furniture stores that have switched to LED lighting in showroom areas may still use fluorescent and high-intensity discharge lighting in their warehouses, office areas, showroom exteriors and parking lots, which use a lot of energy. “In showrooms with light fixtures placed every three feet on center, over areas of 25,000, 35,000 or 45,000 square feet, there’s considerable electrical usage. In contrast, outdoor lighting is a minor expense for retailers who have already converted to LED with photosensor dusk-to-dawn time-of-day controllers positioned on the top of each light. But it’s a different situation for furniture retailers that still operate high-intensity discharge lighting. A high-intensity discharge light is 458 watts, whereas warehouse LEDs are roughly 75 watts.”

Office Areas: “In office areas of buildings, replacing fluorescent fixtures that consume 150 watts each with LED lighting that pulls 30 or 40 watts represents substantial savings as a percentage of total energy usage for those administrative areas,” Tuddenham added.”

Other Considerations

Schroder mentioned that although ROI drives many of these decisions, other factors should be considered, including state regulations that ban the sale of replacement fluorescents, incandescents and high-intensity discharge/metal halide lamps.

Regulations: “December 31, 2028,” he noted, “is the last time in the USA that anyone can purchase replacement fluorescent bulbs with end pins. Canadian regulations kick in a year later. Once federal regulations go into effect, these older fixtures will effectively be banned. The primary benefit of taking these lamps off the market will be to reduce environmental mercury exposure. Reduced power consumption will be a secondary benefit.”

Extended Life: “Another consideration is that dimming with controls has the added benefit of extending fixture and lamp life. A dimmed fixture rated for 50,000 hours could last 70,000 or 80,000 hours due to minimizing the thermal load over time. Even dimming by 10% can double the life of an LED fixture or lamp with a solid-state driver rated for a maximum temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit. When the temperature exceeds that, it can cut the driver’s life in half.”

“Even adding a simple manually operated wall box dimmer to reduce track lighting levels,” said Austin, “can reduce the frequency of changing out fixtures and lamps, but it’s something hardly anyone does. As Neil described earlier, it’s not as good a solution as adding automation to control showroom lighting, but it’s still worth considering.”

“We can now deliver high-quality light that brings out the color of home furnishings items and also changes the color temperature throughout the day.”

Advanced Controls & the Future of Retail Lighting

Color Temperature & Light Level: Tuddenham explained that a best practice for showroom lighting is to illuminate products close to how they will appear in customers’ homes. “That requires using LED spots and floods to highlight products at a static color temperature and spectrum. The Color Rendering Index (CRI) should show colors naturally to mimic lighting conditions in a typical house. The average house has a Kelvin temperature of about 2900.”

Cancellations / Revenue Churn

Cancellations of written sales, also known as revenue churn, kills cash flow and lowers financial performance. For this reason, it makes sense to track cancellations, understand why they happen, and implement processes that will lessen revenue churn.

Austin agreed. “When people buy furniture, they don’t want to be shocked because it doesn’t look the same at home as at the point of sale. So, when we design lighting systems, we’ll specify between 3100 to 3300 Kelvin for general light and 2700 Kelvin for accent lighting. We try to get a blended CRI so that a maroon leather sofa purchase is less likely to look washed out to brown when delivered to a home.

“But in the next five years or so, we will see a wider introduction of adaptive home lighting that adjusts light level, color temperature and brightness throughout the day continuously to render morning, afternoon and evening natural light.

“Ambient lighting affects human circadian rhythms, which in turn have been found to affect sleep, mood and other mental functions. As this aspect of health and wellness finds its way more fully into homes, we may need to match that in stores. One could also imagine that furniture departments or room vignettes could be bathed in ambient light correlated with optimal purchasing behavior.”

Playing With Light: “In this regard,” said Schroder, “companies like Lutron are pushing the envelope. There are many ways to play with light. We can now deliver high-quality light that brings out the color of home furnishings items and also change the color temperature throughout the day, or, for example, elicit an emotional response that makes a space feel a certain way.

“There are so many possibilities. High-end controls can be used to saturate specific frequencies of colors with color-tuning technology. These are already being installed in art galleries or entertainment venues to unleash the full spectrum of what’s possible to create more dynamic spaces.

“Residentially, commercially, and in the retail and hospitality markets, there’s a push to use lighting that provides more than mere functionality. Lighting can make spaces feel important and inviting, so customers stay longer, feel better and are more likely to buy. We’re on the front side of a wave, which will be a big deal. Retailers will have more flexibility to highlight products better or adjust the mood of a space using an app for a grand opening, customer appreciation or sales event. For example, control technology might be used in a design center to help clients see how furniture will look under different lighting conditions,” concluded Schroder.

In closing, Tuddenham reminded Furniture World’s readers that although furniture retailers must plan for the future, many still need to catch up. Old technologies add costs and result in less-than-optimal illumination. “Making the right decisions,” she said, “requires expertise to specify the right fixtures and lamps and to make cost-effective decisions regarding upgrading to programmable sensors that dim individual lights or a complete lighting control system to achieve maximum efficiency and safety.”

Questions about this article can be directed to Jeana Tuddenham via editor@furninfo.com.