Why the Lighting Industry Needs To Stop Talking to Itself and Start Talking to the Public
The lighting industry has always done an excellent job talking to itself about the importance of light. But if we are to "light the way," we must get comfortable speaking to the general public, including key decision-makers, about the importance of light.
If it's lighting design versus value engineering, we must increase the value of light.
During the 20th century and the birth of the lighting design profession, designers needed only to be able to convince their architects of the importance of a given lighting scheme or detail.
However, in today's climate of fierce value engineering and commoditization of a wide variety of lighting products, lighting designers cannot, project by project, convince all stakeholders of the importance of lighting. To break the constant cycle of value engineering, we must create demand for high-quality lighting in our culture. This shift will ensure the much broader adoption of the technologies the industry has pioneered or incorporated over the last 20 years.
Many Public-Facing Issues with Lighting Solutions
We know light can create positive and negative impacts in many areas of life, including but not limited to:
Healthy Sleep
Wildlife impacts of light at night
Global Sustainability of the built environment
Autism and Sensory Processing disorders
Patient Care and Healing
Disease prevention
Visual Comfort and Acuity
Public Safety (pedestrian and auto traffic)
Improved sales and commerce (retail)
We also know we can have much better design solutions and positive impacts in all of these realms, but investing in lighting is often not a priority when projects go forward. So instead, we do what we always do; we conform to the cultural expectations, even when we know better outcomes are possible.
Patient room without access to natural light, beautifully illuminated.
How to Build Demand for Better Light
It will take a sustained effort to build an interest in lighting beyond current professionals in the industry, but we have a model for this kind of change - the organic food industry.
It wasn't that long ago that most Americans considered organic food a weird luxury. But through an ongoing campaign of thought leadership, public ad campaigns, and eventually social media, organic food is now offered in every major grocery store in America.
We can follow that public education model and influence to prioritize lighting on future projects. The rising tide of interest in great lighting will lift all boats in the industry, from designers to manufacturers and everyone in between.
Educate Special Interest Groups
If we want to get decision-makers prioritizing light, they have to start hearing about it from their staff members and being educated before a new project is on the boards.
This kind of education can happen through professional organizations, associations, or even unions. A very brief list of examples:
Association of Teacher Educators
Association of Managed Care Nurses
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
The Nature Conservancy
AARP (and similar)
American Automobile Association
American Association of Clinical Oncology
National Retail Federation
Greenbiz
From just this shortlist of possibilities, you can see that if we take just a tiny amount of time out to educate the broader opportunities for light, how we could potentially grow the foundation for improved lighting on many projects.
Would we rather design and build a hospital for a medical group whose doctors have never heard of great lighting or a group of educated professionals who know light can improve everything from surgical outcomes to patients' sleep to infection prevention? That can only happen if we support the public education efforts of the IES, IALD, NLB, and other organizations - this means not just funding but giving our time and expertise to the cause.
Tell Your Story
Every single one of us has the power to amplify our voice through social media. So if you're comfortable making content (or hiring someone at your firm to do it), start telling your story. The main thing to understand is that if you're not sharing this outside of your professional circle and with friends and friends of friends, we will not grow the collective interest in lighting.
Keys to Social Media Success
Promote Great Design, Not Individual Products
Use stunning visuals
Educate
Promote small wins
Collective effort
Confession Time (+ Update!)
This post started as my application to speak at this year's annual IES conference, but as I wrote my abstract, I thought the content might resonate with others. It is my deep belief that if we are going to grow the demand for high-quality sustainable lighting we must work together. This talk is meant to be the beginning of that discussion and hopefully, spur more action through our thriving professional organizations.
UPDATE: I got accepted to speak at the conference!
