Commercial Warehouse Lighting

If you manage a warehouse, manufacturing plant or factory, you surely want your industrial lighting to be dependable, safe and conducive to employee efficiency. Industrial warehouse lighting can fulfill all these goals. In this article, we’ll discuss the most common types of lighting for warehouses and explain which one is best for your facility.

Types of Warehouse Lighting

When considering options for your warehouse lighting, you’ll have to choose between several types that vary in lifespan, efficiency and other factors. To help you in your search, we’ll discuss the five most commonly used lighting types for warehouse applications.

1. Halogen

Halogen lamps create light via their wire filament, enclosed by a quartz tube. This tube also contains pressurized halogen iodine or halogen bromine gas that undergoes a reaction with the filament. People commonly use these bright, white lamps as headlights, floodlights and accent lighting.

One of halogen lamps’ most notable advantages is their ability to produce a powerful light beam that you can focus on a particular spot. They also come in various styles, which include everything from reflective spotlights, mini-can bulbs and floods to parabolic aluminized spots, single-ended quartz and double-ended quartz.

Halogen lamps’ lifespan ranges from 2,000 to 4,000 hours and has an energy efficiency of 16 to 29 lumens per watt (LM/W).

2. Incandescent

Incandescent is the most common type of lighting. In these traditional bulbs, an electric current travels through a thin wire filament, heating it and producing white light.

Drawbacks to incandescent bulbs include their relatively short lifespan, which is only 750 to 1,500 hours, and their lower efficiency of 12 to 18 LM/W. However, their affordability and versatility make them a popular choice in a wide variety of lighting environments.

3. Fluorescent

Typically lasting 20,000 hours and providing a maximum output of 100 LM/W, fluorescent lights are exceptionally efficient and durable. Fluorescent lights use a mere fifth of the energy that incandescent bulbs do, but they have an impressive 20 times the lifespan. Fluorescent bulbs’ construction is somewhat complicated, but in essence, the light results from an electric arc traveling through an inert gas.

4. High-Intensity Discharge

High-intensity discharge light bulbs feature a pressurized gas — either high-pressure sodium, metal halide or mercury — enclosed in a tube. An electric current passes through this tube, producing a stunningly powerful light. Though HID lights often require time to attain 100% brightness, this lighting type is an ideal choice for general, landscape and outdoor lighting.

5. LED

LED lighting’s popularity has increased tremendously over the past 10 or so years. Like its fluorescent counterpart, LED lighting is highly efficient and lasts for an incredibly long time, sometimes up to 100,000 hours. Also, unlike other lighting types, LED lights don’t burn out, but instead, they get dimmer with time.

Environmental friendliness is another reason to pursue warehouse LED lights, as they have no toxic chemicals, whereas fluorescent bulbs contain several. LED light is also becoming a better investment every year, with many systems paying for themselves in only a couple of years.

Benefits of LED Lighting for Warehouses

LED lights offer many advantages over more traditional lighting options in general, including higher-quality light, enhanced energy efficiencies, long lifespan and environmental friendliness. However, LED lights bring various additional advantages to warehouses and other vast, open facilities.

1. No Warmup Times

Metal halide lamps, which are traditional choices for warehouse lighting fixtures, take a notoriously long time to warm up, with full power sometimes taking up to 20 minutes to reach. That’s why you see stadiums that use metal halide lamps turn the lights on long before the sky gets completely dark. These lamps are highly inefficient. Not only is a stadium operating lights for 20 or more minutes before it needs them, but metal halides are also less efficient at lower power, meaning that they’re burning a significant amount of energy per lumen during the warmup process. As a result, many major stadiums have switched to LED lights.

2. Dimmable Lighting

To dim LED lights, you’ll need to install LED-specific hardware. However, this hardware is widely available, is simple to install and adds a lot of value to your overall lighting system. Unlike metal halide lights, LEDs become more energy-efficient when they run at under 100% power. Running them at less than full power will also increase the LED tube lights’ lifespan, which means a facility manager can save even more by wisely managing their lighting.

One way to save extra money with LED high efficiency warehouse lighting is to install LED lights together with sensors, such as motion devices or timers, that adapt to the facility’s traffic patterns and ambient conditions. This method, known as “adaptive lighting,” is a great way to save money at your warehouse.

3. Seamless Switching

Warehouses with metal halide lights must deal with a major inconvenience — if they turn the lights off, they have to wait 15 or 20 minutes for the lights to come back on fully. Managers need to run the lights for longer periods than they would with LEDs. For example, imagine you have metal halide lights in your facility, and there is a 45-minute lull. In this case, you would usually leave them on, as it would be too much trouble to turn them off and risk problems when you need them again. On the other hand, it’s possible to turn off LED lights and immediately flip them back on again with zero degradation to your light output or the light itself. You won’t waste energy or shorten your lights’ lifespan by using them unnecessarily.

Contact T.P. Supply Co for LED Lighting Solutions Today

At T.P. Supply, we carry various high-quality LED warehouse lighting, so feel free to browse our online selection. If you’re unsure about what sizes, quantities or capacities you need to complete your order, you’re welcome to give us a call at 877-302-2337, and our friendly sales team will be glad to walk you through the process.

You can also take advantage of our live chat feature at the bottom right of the page, where someone will guide you through your order. Or, reach out to us by email at sales@tpsupplyco.com, and a representative will be in touch with you promptly!