Location: Gwalia SBR
Photos by: Dinesh Shukla
@dineshshukla40
Lighting plays an important role in restaurants. The light bulbs and fixtures have to be selected keeping in mind factors like décor and aesthetics, enhancing the ambiance, creating the right atmosphere, brightness and energy efficiency. LED lights have revolutionalized the Food and Hospitality Industry – they go with the green and sustainable image that every company aims to achieve, and at the same time they are directly tied to saving energy and reducing monthly energy costs, which can impact the bottom-line of your restaurant business.
LED stands for ‘Light Emitting Diode,’ a semiconductor device that converts electricity into light, doing so more efficiently than incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs. By replacing your conventional light bulbs with LED lights it is a known fact that you can save more than 50% energy.
For restaurants the experience set forth for customers is a top priority, and lighting is an important factor in creating it. Therefore, the right selection of luminaire for each area and application is an important aspect to consider when designing the lighting of your restaurant.
Selection of LED Lights
Other than the architectural design and flexibility, it is important to select the right CCT (Correlated Colour Temperature) of LED Lights for your restaurant needs. CCTs are broadly classified in the following categories:
Warm White: 2700K
Neutral White:4000K
Cool White: 5700K.
CCTs like 3000K, 5000K and 6500K are also used for various applications.
Conventional lights were identified based on the wattage (power consumption of the lamp). However, the illumination benchmark of LED lights is more of its efficacy – lumen per watt. High lumen efficacy lights can even save more energy. 100-125 lumen / watt LED lights are generally available in the market.
One of the major challenges when using LED lighting is its high glare. However, it can be controlled up to a great extent by using suitable diffusers and glare cutting optics and reflectors.
Types of LED Fixtures
The small-sized LED gives a lot of flexibility in luminaire designs. A variety of LED lights are available in the market for various applications. Some popular LED light fittings are:
Recess mounted
Surface-mounted
Pendant models.
It is further divided in terms of
Down lights
COB spotlights
Tract lights
Zoom Lights
Linear Profiles
Troffers
Architectural shapes and designs.
Post top lanterns, decorative pole lights, street lights and flood lights are some of the outdoor lighting applications.
Lighting fixture architecture: A lighting fixture contains 3 major parts: the Housing, the LED Driver and the LED chip module. A good fixture design always demands better thermal management and uniform light distribution. The absence of it may attract fast lumen depreciation and LED failures.
Lighting Designs
A good lighting design helps for effective utilization of energy and space, and also provides best user experience. Lighting designers uses various design software like DiaLUX, CalcuLUX, among others, to design the lighting layout. Lighting designers also consider various inputs like application, user comfort, illumination requirement and so forth during the design.
Lighting Automation
Up to 70% energy saving is possible if the lighting is coupled with sensors or automation. There are various types of lighting sensors. Basic level sensors are occupancy based on-off sensors which automatically switch off lights in case of no occupancy. The next level is of dimming and daylight harvesting sensors. These sensors dim the light when enough day light is available. It also works on occupancy-based switching. A hotel lobby and passage lighting can be well controlled by using simple occupancy or dimming sensors.
Human Centric Lighting
Lighting is no more for floors and walls. Modern lighting designs are meant for human comfort. There are two different aspects in Human Centric Lighting:
Emotional Effective Lighting (EEL): EEL plays a major role in restaurants, hotels, bars and spa. It is all about creating a “mood lighting” by playing with various colors of lights and various dimming level. This is possible with simple automation tools like remote based color changes and smart switches.
Biological Effective Lighting (BEL): Natural sunlight is the best for human body. Sunlight CCT varies from morning to evening. This helps creating various hormones like melatonin and cortisol in human body which helps the person to be either to relax or to enhance concentration. However, an average person spends majority of his/her time indoor. Indoor artificial lights are more of single colour which creates stress and fatigue. Human centric lighting automation recreates sunlight like colour changes and dimming inside the room without a window. It is possible by using lighting automation and sensors by tuning the lights matching various CCTs of sunlight. Various international hotels are using Human centric lighting systems in their premium rooms, banquets and board rooms. Circadian rhythm based human centric lighting systems are available with few key players in the industry.
Lighting Management Systems (LMS)
Data management, control and monitoring are easy in the case of LED lighting. Lighting can be a part of complete building management system (BMS) through various connectivity method. “Connected lighting” is the new trend in the industry. Each and every light could be connected to a computer dash board or mobile app through various communication protocol. DALI (Digital addressable Lighting Interface), KNX, Zigbee, Wifi and BLE (Blutooth Low Energy) are a few of the widely used protocols in lighting management systems. Various reports like power consumption, number of switching, scheduling, etc. are possible with LMS.
Specialty Lighting for Hotels & Restaurants
Fire Escape and Emergency Lighting
In most of the cases of fire accidents, the occupants get some time to escape. However, a fire short circuit disconnects the power supplies both from main as well as inverters. This makes the fire escape difficult for the occupants in the dark. Specially designed “Fire Escape Lighting Systems” are now available for Hotels and Restaurants. It ensures that pathway lighting is available till the last moment without a remote backup or main supplies. These fixtures come with inbuilt battery backup and remain ON till the fixture gets melted!
UV Lighting for Disinfection
Hospitality business is getting back to track slowly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Public places, rooms and restaurant are more prone to viruses. It can be either on surface or air. Specially designed UVC lights (Ultraviolet-C) are very effective to disinfect and kill the viruses. “UV dosage” is most important for effective disinfection. Most of the hand-held devices available in the market are not effective in terms of disinfections. A well designed UVC lighting system can help the disinfection and kill the viruses up to 99.99% effective.
Write to us to know more about lighting and automation for the hospitality industry: john@roshnibazaar.com
