5 Tips On Energy Efficient Lighting Options for Your Business

Energy efficient lighting is a crucial part of running a successful business. In an industry where every dollar matters, it is extremely important to save money wherever you can. When it comes to lighting, you can take a few simple steps to change your lighting for the better, which is why we’ve put together some tips to help you do just that.

In this blog, we’ve assembled 5 tips that can help you utilize the best energy efficient lighting options for your business. These tips will not only guide you towards resources for purchasing energy efficient lighting, but will also help you figure out just how much energy efficient lighting will save your business.

With this information at your disposal, you’ll be able to quickly outfit your business with modern, efficient lighting that will help improve your bottom line while also providing the type of lighting you need for operations and other day-to-day activities to run smoothly.

Run The Numbers

To truly understand how much your business can save by switching to energy efficient lighting, you have to run the numbers on the amount of energy your current lighting uses as opposed to what you can save if you switch out for more modern lighting.

Oftentimes, new lighting technology such as LEDs costs more upfront, but don’t let this dissuade you from buying an LED bulb. Over time, LEDs can save you a lot of money. A great example of this is a study done by The Simple Dollar, which compared the costs of incandescent, CFL (Compact Fluorescent Light) and LED bulbs. By combining the upfront cost and the cost of replacing and running the bulbs, they found that over 25,000 hours you’d have to spend $21 on incandescent bulbs, compared to only $8 for an LED light.

A free calculator for estimating your costs and savings when it comes to LEDs is available by a service called LED Waves. With the tool, you can estimate what your break-even point and sketch out a timeline for making switching to energy efficient lighting worth it for your business.

Keep Up With New Lighting Technology

If you don’t know much about newer technologies such as LEDs, then it would be helpful to educate yourself on their benefits and drawbacks. Many people who have used LEDs in the past might not be aware that they’ve improved quite a bit over the last decade, offering a wide degree of color temperatures and lighting styles for an assortment of applications.

Take a minute to research what the new energy efficient lights are capable of, and then see if any of those lights would work well for your business. In some applications, it might make more sense to switch to energy efficient lighting as soon as possible, while in others it might make more financial sense to wait until your current lighting goes out.

Take The Long Term Investment Into Account

We can’t emphasize this point more – energy efficient lighting is a long-term investment. As is oftentimes the case with LEDs, the upfront costs can be quite a bit higher than traditional lighting technologies such as incandescents. When you look at it long-term, though, you’ll find that the long-term savings on energy will quickly dwarf the upfront cost of buying the newer, energy efficient bulbs.

As The Simple Dollar study we highlighted earlier illustrated, over 25,000 hours of use the LED bulb cost significantly less than the incandescent bulb. Up until a certain point, though, the incandescent bulb was cheaper to purchase and operate. If you only look at your lighting costs short-term, you are missing out on a lot of savings that could be helping your business be more profitable.

Consider Different Ways to Light Your Business

When it comes to lighting and energy efficiency, there are a multitude of options to choose from. Do you want to light your business the same way you’d light it with traditional lighting, or do you want to incorporate things like sensors, timers, and daylighting techniques to improve your energy efficiency even more? A number of LED distributors have made it their mission to make LEDs widely available to electrical contractors and business owners, helping to advocate for energy efficient lighting in the process.

Switching to energy efficient lighting in your business can be a great opportunity to change your lighting system to suit your needs. A daylight sensor that adjusts your lighting based on the amount of natural light available might be helpful for well-lit spaces, while in other applications you might want to look into installing an occupancy or vacancy sensor that turns off your lighting when it’s not in active use.

Look At The Lifespan of Your Lighting

Newer energy efficient bulbs often last a lot longer than older technology, meaning you also save money on buying new bulbs while also cutting out the headache of having to change hard-to-reach bulbs and wasting your employees’ precious time. 

LED bulbs often last somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 hours, which is a significant improvement over the lifespan of more traditional lighting technologies. In comparison, some incandescents only last about 2,000 hours, a fraction of the lifespan of an LED. Fluorescent bulbs, which were once the most efficient lights in the industry, don’t even last as long as LEDs, with most of them topping out at about 36,000 hours.