Canopy Lighting Applications Include Gas Stations, Warehouses, Factories, Grocery Stores & Retail Store Front Walkways.

Canopy lighting provides an ideal light source for pedestrian traffic and security lighting around a building.  They are heavily used by industrial facilities that operate during nighttime hours, such as factories with around the clock production, or warehouses that require light around shipping and receiving docks.  Other businesses that rely heavily on canopy lighting are grocery stores and gas stations.  Retail centers also use these fixtures to illuminate sidewalks that run in front of storefronts.  In the non-business sector, they are also very common in public schools and covered walkways on college campuses, and you tend to see them a lot around civic centers and public recreation facilities as well.

It is important to determine first the foot candle density that client needs around the building or underneath an awning before you begin selecting fixtures.  Many people assume that the brighter the canopy lights are the better.  This is not typically true.  If lights under a gas station canopy are too bright, motorists cannot see clearly to steer between pumps, and the glare from the lights makes it hard for their eyes to readjust when they drive away.  The same thing often happens to people parking near an awning with canopy lights that are too intense.  They will have trouble parking, and they be temporarily blinded by too much light.  It is important that you obtain a photometric analysis from RLLD Commercial Lighting that will tell you exactly how much illumination your client needs under that awning or canopy.  We can then help you choose a lamp whose lumens output will generate the exact foot candle output required without producing excess light pollution in the process.  Frosted lens covers may be necessary to make certain that the light is bright, but diffused so that too much of it doesn’t hurt the eyes.  This is normally advisable any time you install canopy light fixtures near a covered parking area.  Other glare shielding options should be considered based upon the type of facility you are servicing and where the fixtures are installed.  Your specialist can help you with all necessary calculations to determine the exact fixture type and model you need.

There are other important factors to take into consideration when selecting canopy lighting fixtures for your client’s location.  One is the light source itself.  Your clients will eventually face unexpected costs if they are not equipped with the best fixtures with the longest anticipated lifespan.  We recommend that you propose canopy lights that are energy efficient and feature lives of at least 10,000 hours. A variety of lamp types are available through our procurement channels that fit these criteria, including HID high pressure sodium and metal halide lights.  We also carry mercury vapor canopy lights, but these have been outlawed in certain states like Arizona and some states along the Eastern Seaboard.  If you are in one of these areas, we recommend substituting either HID metal halides (it normally tends to output a “whiter” light than HPS) or canopy lights with fluorescent lamps that have frosted lenses and are excellent sources of bright, glare free lighting.

There are two more important things to be aware of when choosing canopy lights for your clients.  These are voltage options and the resiliency of the fixtures themselves.  Non profits, city governments, churches, and schools have very thigh operating budgets and can benefit greatly from the reduced costs that low voltage lighting can bring them.  At the same time, most of these facilities, due to ignorance and a general lack of enlightenment among mob elements in our society, are often targets of deliberate criminal mischief and vandalism.  To help protect your clients, ask your RLLD Commercial Lighting representative about vandal-proof units that are impervious to the force of typical assaults on property and equipment. 

All consultation services offered by RLLD Commercial Lighting, along with photometric analyses of client sites, are free to clients and serious inquirers.  Casual inquiries can receive the same level of service for a small, reasonable fee.