The type of lighting you select for your grocery store is important. When food looks attractive and appetizing, shoppers want to buy them. When you have the best lighting possible, you can save energy and money, and in addition provide your customers with an enjoyable shopping experience.
More and more grocery stores are finding the benefits of using LED lighting over fluorescent lighting. If you’re a grocery store retailer, here are some reasons to use LED lighting, as well as some considerations to make.
Offers Exceptional Coloring
LED lighting improves the color of foods.
- Meats—Although sliced meats that look discolored may only be an aesthetic concern, it can turn off shoppers from buying. When you use LED lighting, you don’t have to worry about meat discoloration.
- Produce—Fruits and vegetables look better under LED lighting. To draw additional attention on certain types of produce, use special optics that can enhance the color spectrum of fresh foods even more.
Is Ideal for Cold Foods
Although fluorescent lighting may be an efficient way for many applications, it’s not as effective as LED lighting when it comes to freezer and refrigerator lighting. For example, cold temperatures can cause a drop in the mercury vapor pressure that’s inside fluorescent lamps. This can result in a light output reduction of as much as 25 percent.
On the other hand, LED lightening doesn’t have this effect. In fact, sometimes the light output from LED lighting actually gets better in a cold setting.
LED Lights Last Longer
LED lights can last for more than 50,000 hours or about three times longer than fluorescent lights. This means you don’t have to change bulbs as much, which saves money. This type of lighting also reduces heat emissions.
It’s Environmentally Friendly
Since there are fewer bulbs to change, there’s not as much garbage in landfills. This gives LED lighting another advantage, making it more environmentally friendly.
Considerations
- Unlike incandescent lights, there isn’t a single size of LED lamps.
- Consider your store’s dimming needs.
- A growing number of grocery stores are now using track fixtures for lighting up food displays such as in their produce sections.
- Replacing fluorescent lights with LED lights in vertical and horizontal freezer cases can save your store as much as 50 percent in energy expenses.
