Much of the time, buying LEDs online isn’t so much a walk in the park as it is an expedition through the jungle. There are numerous competing brands in a poorly standardized market, making it hard for customers to understand which to choose. To help clarify the situation, here are the main LED lighting properties to consider when comparing LED strip lights. Lumens The measure of lumens is the measure of how much “visible” light is emitted from a source. For LED strip lighting, the amount of lumens will tell you how much light will be produced. The lumen output from our LED strip lights is measured in both lumens per reel and lumens per foot. To find the total amount of lumens produced by your installation, multiply the lumens per foot by how many feet of lights you’ll be rolling out. The highest lumen output LED strip light we carry is the UltraBright™ Bright White Industrial Series strip, which emits a whooping 11,000 lumens per reel. Watts Check the wattage to find out how much energy the LED strip light you are considering will use. LEDs are a highly efficient form of lighting, but depending on the manufacturer, some chips will use less energy than others. To see how efficient any light is, divide the amount of lumens produced by the number of watts it requires (“lumens per watt”). All Flexfire LEDs strip lights are highly efficient, though our “cool” temperature (brighter) lights are generally the most efficient because they don’t require as much phosphor coating. Color Rendering Index (CRI) Not all light is made equally; some light renders color better than others. CRI, Color Rendering Index, measures how natural colors look under a light source when compared with sunlight. The index runs from 0-100, with...

As with many other businesses, the key to running a successful grocery store is to sell high quality, attractive products while maintaining low operating costs. Installing LED strip lights for commercial refrigeration and food display helps increase profit margins by increasing product appeal while also lowering operating costs. Visual merchandising is known to have a strong effect on customer buying behavior, as shown in a study published by the International Journal of Engineering Science and Innovative Technology. The study found that 85% of customers sampled felt that attractive colors and lighting make them more likely to spend more time in a store. According to the researchers, respondents mentioned that effective lighting in particular helped them to “select the right products, reduce the time wasted and to feel relaxed” during their shopping experience. If you want customers to buy food, you must make the food look appealing. Many conventional forms of artificial light fail to accurately reveal colors as they would appear under natural sunlight — but LED lighting is not a conventional source of light. LED lighting: color as it was meant to be Advances in LED technology have vastly increased the level at which LED lights can faithfully reproduce colors. Think about the decision that goes into buying a fresh mango. If the lighting source renders the colors of the fruit drab and lifeless, it’s going to be a tough sell to get customers to fork over the cash for this pricey delicacy. However, imagine those mangos under bright, natural looking, evenly distributed LED strip lights, which reproduce the fiery reds and energetic oranges in the precise manner they would be rendered by tropical daylight. LEDs also make great accent lights to spotlight high-margin fresh food displays. Adding LED lighting to fresh produce displays...

CRI, or Color Rendering Index, is the latest buzzword in consumer lighting circles. With the current phasing out of traditional incandescent bulbs, many consumers are scrambling to understand their remaining choices. Savvy lighting manufacturers understand this, and have invested a great deal in educating customers about things like color temperature, lumens, and now CRI. So how does CRI work? Basically, take a light bulb and shine it onto a few bright, colorful items. How natural do their colors look? Color Rendering Index is a mathematical measure of this, where a light source is tested and given a score from 0-100. Any light bulb, tube, or strip that measures greater than 90 is typically considered “High CRI”, and thus very effective at rendering natural-looking color at a given color temperature. As a point of reference, many of the fluorescent or other types of lighting that people consider “harsh” or “artificial” measure in the 50-70 CRI range.   Take a look at the two photos above. In the first photo, under lights rated at CRI 57, the orange bell pepper has lost much of its natural color, appearing almost yellow. Similarly, the green apple, red bell pepper, and yellow marker appear dull and lifeless. In the second photo, under CRI 93 lighting, the colors are much more alive in comparison, down to the white board on which everything is placed. Testing for CRI requires special machinery designed specifically for this purpose. During this test, a lamp is shone onto eight different colors (or “R values”), termed R1 through R8. The lamp receives a score from 0-100 for each color, based on how natural the color is rendered in comparison with how the color looks under a “perfect” or “reference” light source at the same color temperature...

Based in Tamuning, Guam, Source Lighting and Electric  contacted us about installing LED display case lighting for a client in the duty-free shop at Guam International Airport. In principle, retail display cases are ideally suited for LED strip lights. Small, thin, and flexible, “strip” or “tape” lights feature adhesive backing and can be hidden away while still providing high quality illumination that presents products in their best light. There are, however, several different brands to choose from, with corresponding differences in quality and durability. The Source team immediately raised this concern, as they’d achieved mixed results with LED strip lights in prior installations. After some initial testing, they were impressed with our overall product quality and chose Flexfire LEDs UL Listed UltraBright™ Strip Lights in Warm White for this retail display case. The client is extremely happy with the results, and several other vendors in the duty-free shop have since inquired about similar installations.   Choose one of our convenient Flexfire LEDs strip light kits to suit the appropriate brightness, length and color of your LED display case lighting project:        ...