Commercial LED lighting upgrade: what does the job actually involve?

What does a commercial LED lighting upgrade actually involve?

Four stages: a survey, a design, the installation, and a check that the result matches the design. The fittings are the visible part, but the decisions that make the job worth doing happen before anything is unscrewed.

The survey records what is there: the fitting types, how many, the circuits they are on, how the lighting is switched, and the hours each area is actually lit. It also records what each space is used for, because a picking aisle, an office and a store room need very different light.

The design turns that into a layout. Sometimes it is one LED fitting for one old one. Often it is fewer fittings, better placed, with presence detection in the rooms people pass through and daylight dimming near the windows and rooflights. Then the work is done, the light levels are measured on completion, and you get a certificate for the electrical work.

Can you just put LED tubes in the old fittings?

You can, and it is the cheapest way to change the lamps, but it is rarely the best way to upgrade the lighting.

There are two kinds of retrofit tube. One runs on the fitting’s existing control gear, so the old gear stays in the circuit and goes on wearing out. The other needs the gear removed and the fitting rewired, which turns a manufactured luminaire into a modified one. Once that has been done, the next person to change a lamp has to know which tube goes where, and a fluorescent tube in a rewired fitting is a fault waiting to happen. Every modified fitting needs labelling.

Retrofit tubes also leave you with the old optics, the old diffusers and no controls. New luminaires give you all three, and the control is often where the real saving sits.

The honest exception: if your fittings are fairly recent and in good order, we will say so. Replacing a sound fitting to sell you a new one is not an upgrade.

Why are so many businesses changing their lighting now?

Because the tubes are going. The government announced in 2021 that the sale of the traditional fluorescent tubes common in offices would end from September 2023, and a 2023 amendment to the hazardous substances rules ended most of the remaining exemptions for mercury in fluorescent lamps from February 2024.

Nothing makes an existing tube illegal to use. You can run what you have until it fails. But replacement tubes and control gear are getting harder to find, and a building that relies on them is planning its lighting one failed fitting at a time. Choosing when to change is better than having the choice made by the last box of tubes in the store room.

What rules apply to new lighting in a commercial building?

Three sets. The workplace rules say the light has to be right for the work. The building regulations say it has to be efficient. The wiring regulations say it has to be safe.

The Workplace Regulations require suitable and sufficient lighting in every workplace, and the HSE’s guidance, HSG38, explains what that means in practice for different tasks. Too little light is a safety problem. Too much is wasted money and glare.

Approved Document L, volume 2, applies when fixed lighting is installed in an existing building, not just a new one. General lighting should average at least 95 luminaire lumens per circuit watt, and spaces that are often empty should switch off automatically, through presence detection for example. Good LED fittings meet the efficacy figure easily. The controls are the part that gets left out of cheap quotes.

All of it is installed to BS 7671 and certified, and as the occupier you have a standing duty under the Electricity at Work Regulations for the installation in your premises.

What happens to the emergency lighting when the fittings change?

It changes too, and that is not ours to design, install or certify.

Many commercial buildings have emergency lighting built into some of the ordinary fittings, with a battery pack inside. Take those fittings out and you have removed part of the escape lighting. The responsible person for the premises has a duty under the Fire Safety Order to keep escape routes lit when the power fails, so the emergency fittings have to be replaced, put back on the right supply and tested by somebody who does that work.

Here is the thing a sales-led quote will not tell you. Plenty of lighting upgrades include “emergency conversions” as a line item because it closes the sale. We do not offer emergency lighting. On the survey we mark every emergency fitting, leave the unswitched supplies in place, and tell you to bring in a specialist to run alongside us. It is one more contractor, but it is the right one, and the certificate they leave is the one the fire officer will ask for.

Can the work happen while we are open?

Yes. Most of our commercial lighting work is in occupied buildings. We work area by area, so one aisle or one floor is off while the rest carries on, and anything that would stop the business goes out of hours.

High bay work in a warehouse needs powered access, so the aisles under the work are closed while the platform is in them. That is a conversation with whoever runs the floor, not a surprise on the day. Racking, sprinkler pipes and roof lights all shape where the new fittings can go.

The old tubes contain mercury, which is why they were phased out, so they go to a lamp recycler rather than the skip. That is part of the job, and it should be in the quote.

What changes the price of an LED lighting upgrade?

We price from the survey, not a rate per fitting. These are the things that move it.

• The number and type of fittings, and whether fewer, better placed ones will do.
• Mounting height and access: an office ceiling and a warehouse roof are different jobs.
• The controls: presence detection, daylight dimming, or a lighting control system.
• Whether the circuits and switching can be reused or need altering.
• Phasing and out of hours working around your operation.
• External and car park lighting, which is often a separate circuit and a separate decision.

The payback depends on your current fittings, your hours and your tariff, so we work it out for your building. Send us your layout and opening hours through our quote page, or read how we approach commercial lighting first. If the numbers do not stack up for part of the building, we will tell you to leave that part alone.

Questions we get asked about this