Lighting Design Guide

Professional lighting design resources for industrial, educational, agricultural, and outdoor applications — with illuminance standards, power density calculations, product recommendations, and case studies.

Overview

Professional lighting design requires balancing illuminance levels, energy efficiency, visual comfort, and regulatory compliance. This guide series covers design principles for industrial, commercial, agricultural, and outdoor lighting applications, with practical calculations and product recommendations based on Queendom’s 25+ years of LED manufacturing and lighting installation experience.

Each design guide provides: (1) international illuminance standards (IES, EN, GB), (2) lighting power density requirements (ASHRAE, IECC), (3) lumen method and point-by-point calculation examples, (4) LED product selection criteria by application, (5) color temperature and color rendering recommendations, and (6) real-world case studies with measured results.

Available Design Guides

Industrial Lighting Design Guide

Comprehensive design guide for factories, warehouses, and industrial facilities. Covers IES illuminance standards, ASHRAE 90.1 LPD limits, high bay vs. low bay fixture selection, hazardous area requirements, and energy management controls.

Target audience: Facility engineers, lighting designers, project managers

Classroom Lighting Design Guide

Educational environment lighting design covering IES and EN 12464-1 standards, UGR glare control, circadian lighting, color rendering requirements, and ASHRAE LPD compliance for schools.

Target audience: School administrators, architects, lighting designers

Upcoming Guides

  • Greenhouse Lighting Design Guide — horticultural lighting with PPFD calculations, spectrum selection, and photoperiod planning
  • Outdoor and Solar Lighting Design Guide — area lighting, pathway lighting, and solar-powered LED systems
  • Commercial Office Lighting Design Guide — open-plan office lighting with daylight harvesting and occupancy controls

For personalized lighting design assistance, contact our engineering team through the Customer Support Center.

The Design Guide’s Method: From Task to Fixture Count

Lighting design is a chain of conversions — task requirement to illuminance, illuminance to luminous flux, flux to fixture count, fixture count back to a verifiable layout. Each conversion has a documented method, and this guide keeps them in one place so a reviewer can audit any step:

  1. Define the task plane. Not the floor — the surface where work happens. Warehouse aisles: 0.8 m vertical on rack faces. Assembly benches: 0.75 m horizontal. Sports: the playing surface plus a vertical component for camera paths.
  2. Set target illuminance and uniformity from the applicable standard (EN 12464-1 in Europe, IES recommended levels in North America).
  3. Apply the maintenance factor from your cleaning cycle and lumen-depreciation curve — with modern LEDs, 0.85–0.9 is typical.
  4. Compute fixture count from the lumen method, then verify the layout in simulation using the manufacturer’s IES photometry — methods and file hygiene are covered in the lighting download center.
  5. Check glare (UGR) against the space class — fine-task areas need UGR ≤ 19, general industrial ≤ 22.
  6. Verify LPD compliance with the two-number method in the power density guide.

Space-Class Quick Reference

Space Illuminance (maintained) UGR ≤ Uniformity ≥ Watch Out For
Precision assembly 500–750 lux 19 0.6 Shadowing from machine envelopes; add local task light
Warehouse aisles 150–200 lux 22 0.4 Vertical illuminance on rack faces for picking
Classroom 300–500 lux 19 0.6 Flicker with camera/recording; specify high-frequency drivers
Cold storage 150–200 lux 22 0.4 Condensation cycling; IP65 sealed fixtures with drain paths
Horticulture PPFD-based n/a 0.7 crop canopy Spectrum recipe per growth stage — see the agricultural white paper

Design Details That Separate Good Layouts from Average Ones

  • Mounting height sets everything: double the height, quadruple the fixture count for the same task-plane level — optimize rack and luminaire geometry together
  • Aisle-aligned optics (asymmetric distributions) beat symmetric floods in warehouse racking by 25–35% installed watts
  • Emergency and egress lighting belongs in the same layout file, not a separate afterthought — coverage conflicts surface during commissioning otherwise
  • Sensor placement follows the PIR cone, not the ceiling grid: one occupancy sensor per structural bay is a starting point, not a rule

Full worked examples with measured results: industrial design guide, classroom design guide, and the case study library.