HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST LED WALL LIGHTING

Wall pack lights, or exterior building lights, are lights that are usually mounted on the exterior walls of commercial buildings. They are the most common commercial outdoor lighting fixtures. Wall packages use high-intensity lamp heads that are durable, save energy and have low levels of light pollution. These lights offer additional security to buildings, as multiple fixtures are normally mounted on a wall to illuminate specific areas outside a building.

There are 4 types of traditional lamps used in wall packages:

• High-pressure sodium
• Metal halide
• Mercury vapor
• Fluorescent lamps

And while these lights are very capable of generating bright light, even in harsh environments with snow, rain, and sleet, they are not as efficient as LED lamps.

High-pressure sodium bulbs have a low color temperature and the color of the light they produce is usually very yellow (2200K-2400K). The metal halide may have a higher color temperature (4000K-4500K) but it takes a long time to heat and cool (as is the case with all HID lights). Fluorescent lamps have the best color temperature of all conventional lights (2700K-6500K) but consume a lot of electricity and do not have a long service life. 

LED-wall packages exceed traditional lights in all aspects: energy consumption, light power, light uniformity, life, maintenance, and heat emission.

There are 4 types of wall pack lights:

• Floodwall pack lights
• Semicorte
• Total cut
• Wall packages from top to bottom

Semi-cut and full-cut wall packages dispense light down, wall packages up and down distribute the light up and down, while wall flood packages distribute most of their light outwards.

If you have decided that the LED is the way to go and you are in the process of choosing wall packages, here are five considerations to guide you in the right direction.

The basics of wall packages

Look at the lumens

In days gone by, people used to look at the watts to determine the brightness of a bulb. While watts may have been an important factor in determining the brightness of traditional light bulbs, they are no longer. The watts simply indicate the electricity that an LED bulb extracts.

Lumens are what you should look for if you want to know the brightness of an LED bulb.

Why lumens?

Lumens tell you the total amount of visible light that a light source produces. Visible light is the light seen by the human eye. An LED bulb that emits more lumens seems brighter than one that emits fewer lumens.

Lumens are important because they tell you how an LED bulb compares with a conventional bulb. For example, if you already have metal halide wall packages installed on the exterior walls of your building and you are looking to replace them with LED wall packages, the lumens can tell you if the LEDs you are planning to purchase will be as bright as metal halide - or brighter.

Save energy with motion sensors

While it is very easy to remember to turn on the lights when you are in a dark area, remembering that turning them off is not always easy.

LEDs with a motion sensor function can significantly reduce the energy consumption of your building. While LEDs can only reduce energy consumption by up to 75%, when combined with motion sensors, energy use can decrease by up to 90%.

Motion sensors turn on the lights if they detect any movement nearby and turn off the lights if they spend a few minutes without activity. Building owners and managers generally install LEDs with motion sensors in outdoor areas that do not have to be on all the time.

Some LED manufacturers to install motion sensors during the manufacturing process, which means you won't have to go through the trouble of installing the sensors after buying LED lights.

The lights must have photocells

Photocells function as light sensors. Unlike infrared sensors that are good for detecting the presence of objects, photocells are good for detecting light. Photocells are also called photo-resistors because they act as light-sensitive resistors. They have little resistance when they are in a place with light and high resistance when they are in a dark place.

The photocells in the LEDs point to the circuit to provide more or less current. The resistance of photocells is generally based on the amount of ambient light that reaches their photosensitive plates. This usually dictates the brightness of the light. LED manufacturers also install photocells, so there is no need for additional integration.

Photocells are used in packages of walls and street lamps from sunset to sunrise, and the light is turned on at night (when the surrounding environment becomes dark) and turns off in the morning (when the environment becomes bright again). By turning on the light only when needed, they prolong the life of the LEDs, save a lot of electricity and reduce maintenance costs.

They must be qualified as wet

The efficiency and longevity of a lamp depend mainly on where you install it. Some operating conditions, such as humidity and water, can be very hard with light bulbs. This is the reason why you should get bulbs specially designed for humid places.

A humid place is a place where water or other forms of moisture (rain, snow, hail, sleet, fog or sea spray) can splash, drip or flow into the fixtures and damage its electrical components. Typical wet locations on the premises include exterior walls of buildings, corridors, driveways, stairs, open garages, and uncovered porches.

Lighting fixtures installed in damp places must have a UL moisture rating so that electrical components can be protected from water and moisture. If these accessories are not classified as wet and are continuously exposed to water, their useful life decreases and they can also become possible fire hazards.

DLC listed for public service refunds

You may have found the "listed DLC" or "approved DLC" tags and had no idea what they meant. DLC is DesignLights Consortium, a certification organization for commercial grade lighting products. DLC-certified lighting products have a high level of energy efficiency, as the organization promotes efficient lighting solutions and collaborates with the government, municipalities, utilities and other partners.

If you buy LED wall packages that are listed in DLC, your local utility may offer discounts, which can significantly reduce initial costs.