Choosing the right light for a space can be confusing, but picking the right high bay light brings with it extra pressure. High bay lights are used in spaces like warehouses and factories, where visibility is critically important. It’s important to get it right.
Fortunately, there are many exceptional LED high bay lights on the market. Choosing the right one is a matter of matching your particular application—warehouse, factory floor, gym, retail space, etc.—with the correct power and features of the best lights available. Let’s review the major factors to consider with this type of fixture.
What Makes a Good High Bay Light?
The current boom in warehouse construction makes this discussion of high bay lights more relevant than ever. Warehouse lighting is a classic use case for high bay lights. These lights guarantee great visibility for work and safety. Here are some issues to consider.
Performance: Because performance is critical for high bay lights, LED options are by far the best choice. LED fixtures provide powerful lighting in a variety of lumen outputs (i.e., brightness) and color temperatures. LED lights are also highly reliable and have longer lifespans than competing products.
A good LED high bay light floods a space with powerful light no matter how high you hang the fixture. A light like the IntrinsiX CIRCA Round High Bay Light can produce up to 43,000 lumens. The CIRCA light produces bright, white light (up to 5,000K) that is perfect for situations that require the best visibility.
Whether your space is a factory floor, an aircraft hanger, or a school gym, an LED high bay light is the only fixture that delivers the performance required.
Safety: High bay lights are a key element to a safe workplace where visibility is important. Workers in spaces like warehouses, workshops, or factory floors often have to deal with dangerous machinery. A well-lit facility is crucial for protecting workers from accidents. Proper lighting in workplaces is also legally required by federal and possibly state regulations. For example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires a certain lighting standard be met for various parts of a workplace, from machine shops to stairwells.
Energy savings: LED high bay lights are also the best choice for the application because of their promise of immense energy savings. LED lights use up to 75% less energy than older technologies, and that means far lower electricity bills. The savings begin to accrue immediately, making the return on investment (ROI) for LED lights extremely high.
Further savings are gained on maintenance, due to the long lifespan of LED lights. The need to buy replacement bulbs and have personnel to install them plummets with LED lights.
Network ability: LED high bay lights are highly efficient and deliver major savings, but there is yet another level of savings available: the optional use of advanced lighting controls (ALC). Also called networked lighting controls or smart light controls, this technology allows you to tie your lights into a programmable network that turns them on only when necessary. This combination of software and hardware is the next generation of energy savings. For example, you could program the lights to turn on and off according to even the most complicated schedule. A further possible step would be to make the lights more automated by employing sensors on the lights to adjust to daylight or worker occupancy.
The ability to affordably and easily program your lighting grid is the next frontier of building maintenance.
Options for High Bay Lights on the Market
—UFO Lights vs. Linear Lights
When looking for LED high bay lights, it’s smart to go with a reputable distributor. This guarantees that you get a certified, high-quality light with proven success and a great warranty. Here are some ways to narrow your search.
Shape and configuration: It’s not often the term UFO makes its way into a commercial lexicon, but here we are. One of the main shapes of high bay lights is the UFO light—a round, saucer-shaped light that is suspended from the ceiling. Sometimes called a round light, the UFO light is a favorite of lighting designers for high-ceilinged spaces like warehouses or factories. They cast their light powerfully and evenly across a space and are perfect for putting into an array. The IntrinsiX CIRCA light mentioned above is a UFO light. Besides being highly practical, this UFO LED light has a modern, industrial look that makes a space look great.
The second most common shape for high bay lights is a linear light. This fixture is rectangular in shape, and its LED lights are arranged in a line
(hence the word linear). These lights loosely resemble flat panel LED lights, and, like flat panels, they can be mounted either flush or suspended. Linear lights offer powerful lighting with easy installation. Top products, like the Altitude Linear High Bay LED Light, provided by Duralec, offer high-quality drivers, many mounting options, and integrated sensors.
Wattage: Like most LED lights, high bay lights come in a variety of wattages. These wattages correlate to how bright the lights are. Not all lights are created equal, however. The best fixtures, like the IntrinsiX CIRCA UFO light, are DLC Premium rated, meaning they deliver 130 or more lumens per watt.
The CIRCA light comes in five wattage options (100W, 150W, 200W, 240W, and 300W) and has selectable wattages on all but the most powerful model. This means you can tailor your light to your specific needs. As always, your application is the key factor in determining which light you need.
Mounting options: High bay lights are mounted in a variety of ways due to the high ceilings involved. Good LED high bay lights offer a variety of mounts that will work in whatever application you have. For example, the IntrinsiX’s CIRCA UFO LED light comes with hardware for either pendant or surface mounting. IntrinsiX’s Altitude LED linear light comes with V-shaped hangers and strong chains for hanging the fixture, as well as surface-mounting options.
Emergency backup: LED high bay lights provided by Duralec have optional emergency backup units, as well. These battery packs ensure that your facility never goes dark. This is crucial for worker safety, as well as for legal compliance in many areas (especially egress areas).
Sensor options: The best LED lights today come with a variety of sensors. This technology is what turns a good LED light into something great. Sensors allow lights to be controlled in ways that lead to much better lighting as well as to huge energy savings.
The most common sensors include the daylight harvesting sensor. This photocell device senses how much ambient light is available—say, coming through windows or skylights—and, with the proper controls, can tell a light to adjust to it. Another top sensor is the occupancy (motion) sensor, which can sense when a person enters or leaves a room. The potential of these sensors to save money is immense.
These are just some of the options available for LED high bay lights. To talk about your specific needs, feel free to reach out to a Duralec expert today.