Best Warehouse Lighting – Buyer’s Guide

Best lighting inside warehouse improve workplace safety and logistic efficiency. This page will cover the lighting design inside different parts of warehouse, such as loading, distributing, packaging and storage areas, as well as the pros and cons of using LED lights to replace metal halide, mercury vapor, halogen and HPS flood lighting fixtures in the industrial setting. Solar powered panel can also be added if you would like to save energy.

Best Warehouse Lighting Design

1. Ground Lux Level & Lighting Standard of Warehouse Floor

The indoor environment should have adequate lux level to guarantee worker’s safety. If the lights are dim, the forklift drivers might not be able to see their colleague and lead to tragic accident. The brightness level should be around 200 to 300 lux in loading and unpacking area, and 100 lux in storage unit.

2. Lighting Uniformity

Some may omit the lighting uniformity requirement. Imagine if the area is full of dim and bright spot, the workers’ eye may feel uncomfortable and their productivity will decrease. Most importantly, this improper lighting will cause industrial accident because the workers cannot see clearly the heavy-duty vehicles and he uneven ground. By using the lighting simulation software DIALux, the ground lux level inside warehouse can be estimated before the installation

3. Light Distribution of Warehouse

Type I lighting distribution is suitable for aisle because it offers oval and narrow illumination. This type of distribution optimizes the use of symmetrical, longitudinal lights and reduce the use of unnecessary luminaries. If the position of the lighting fixtures is not at the center of the aisle, we will need type II distribution, which gives asymmetric ground illumination.

4. Luminary Spacing Inside the Storage Unit

Before designing the lighting inside warehouse, we need to look at the distance between the rack and the height of ceiling and plan the proper lighting arrangement. If the luminaries are placed just above the rack, majority of lights will be blocked and the shadow will be significant. To achieve the best outcome, our lighting designer will observe the floor plan of your storage unit, and then decide the unique lighting arrangement.

5. Types of High Bay Lights

We offer flood lights, light bar, light tube and solar lights for loading area, logistic center and other areas inside warehouse. We design the best lighting solution for your application.

6. Control System of Warehouse Lights

Our warehouse lighting supports DMX and DALI system, which gives user-friendly control of brightness. We can also group the luminaries and turn them on/off at once. Photosensor can also be used to dynamically adjust the brightness if the indoor environment is too dim or bright.

Pros and Cons of LED Warehouse Lighting

1. Better Energy Efficiency After LED Replacement

Our LED lights have high luminous efficacy of 130 lumens per watt, which means each wattage consumed produces 130 unit of brightness. We can see the luminous efficacy of metal halide is around 75 to 90 lumens per watt, and halogen has 15 to 20 only, which is the major limitation of the conventional lighting. After retrofitting the ceiling lights with LED, we can save up to 75% energy, not only to reduce the electricity cost but also save our environment.

2. Higher Flexibility of LED Warehouse Lighting Fixtures

Great flexibility means there are a wide range of options available – power, beam angle, CRI, size, weight and other parameters. We can use the lights having different specifications to fit any kind of indoor warehouse. We have LED flood lights having 400W, 1000W, and up to 10000W. Besides, we also offer customization on the installation bracket and other accessories. Please feel free to discuss the unlimited possibilities with our engineers.

3. Higher Durability of LED Lights

Apart from higher energy efficiency, another incentive to adopt LED lights for warehouse is that it lasts much longer than the HID flood lights. If you are using metal halide high bay lights, you will need to replace them every 1 to 2 years because their brightness declines fast. They will be very dim after using for couples of months. On the contrary, after LED replacement, since our LED lights have 80,000 hours life expectancy, they last for at least 18 years if you turn them on 12 hours per day. It is true that the installation cost is sometimes comparable or even higher than the lamp cost. Selecting LED lights for your new warehouse building or your retrofit projects would be your best choice.

4. Flicker Free

Although fluorescent tube is cheaper than LED lights, it is more prone to flicker. The strobe might not be so observable; however it does affect and strain our eyes and get tired easily under the flickering lights. On the contrary, LED lighting fixtures are flicker-free. According to our laboratory test, the amplitude of the lumens is less than 0.3% of the average lumen output of the illumination; hence, the lights will not strobe even under the 5000 fps slow motion camera.

5. Extreme Temperature

Our LED lighting fixtures for warehouse can be applied to cold storage and high temperature environment. The flood lights resist extremely low temperature of -45ºC for the room storing freezing goods. Besides, since some manufacturing process may involve high temperature, we design the luminaires that can work under 100ºC ambient temperature. Our lights have effect heat dissipation system that maintains the junction temperature in a lower range. Our engineers will select the best warehouse lighting that fits your need.

6. Waterproof Lighting for Loading Dock

Our LED lights have IP66 waterproof function, and thus you have no need to worry about the light will go off under heavy rain. LED is the better alternatives of HID lamps and fluorescent tubes.

7. Cost of Lighting

How much does it cost to run the lighting fixtures of warehouse? For a 1000 square meter warehouse having 200 lux ground luminance, it needs approximately 2000W LED flood lights. The running cost = 2000W x 24 hours x $0.12 /1000 = $5.76 per day, and $172.8 per month. Before the halogen replacement, we need 20000W halogen lights, which takes 10 times higher electricity cost. Replacing the HID or other traditional lighting with LED helps reduce the cost. Contact our engineer for more information today.