4 minute read
The Bright Future of Lighting Controls
from Oct/Nov 2025
By Gary Meshberg
Gary Meshberg is chair of the Lighting Controls Academy.
The LED revolution that swept the lighting industry coincided with another, quieter revolution in lighting controls.
While LEDs dominate new construction and have gained a majority share of the existing building stock, lighting controls enjoy plenty of room for growth, enabling the LED revolution to complete its promise of transforming lighting from a cost-bearing utility into a powerful business asset.
In the past, most spaces were controlled with manual switches, and dimming was considered a premium feature for spaces such as conference rooms. Automation, if present, was largely implemented on a time schedule for very large spaces such as floors.
Over the years, lighting controls have evolved to offer intelligent, integrated, and capable solutions that provide a more comfortable and efficient workspace. Wired and wireless communication, distributed intelligence, and LEDs’ inherent dimmability quickly changed the game.
Today’s lighting control systems offer intuitive decision-making, ease of installation and commissioning, scalable control zoning, and capabilities such as color tuning and data collection.
Integration is the next frontier of decarbonization. Commercial building energy codes have evolved to a point where they largely capture potential energy savings from lighting control. Decarbonization demands even deeper energy savings. Integrating controls and luminaires as well as lighting control and HVAC systems creates new opportunities.
Networked lighting control systems continue to strengthen as a platform for intelligent buildings that yield business insights. Integration with HVAC and other building systems enables intelligent, highly responsive buildings. Parallel to this trend, NLCs can generate data that can be used to improve building operation and organizational efficiency while producing other valuable insights.
The existing buildings market represents an enormous opportunity. NLCs can be installed seamlessly without the need for cumbersome wiring. Many building owners have not installed the latest LED technology; these buildings present a significant opportunity to pair lighting controls with the latest LED lighting, fully realizing the technology’s advantages and capabilities as part of a high-quality design.
As commercial lighting rebate programs come to grips with diminishing energy savings from traditional-to-LED conversions, a growing number are incentivizing LED-to-LED upgrades—and requiring lighting controls play a role in the installation.
Lighting control is about value, not just energy. Lighting practitioners understand that quality lighting offers far more value to buildings and their users than minimizing energy costs. Lighting controls have evolved in capability to become an integral part of quality lighting’s value proposition. Dimming, color tuning, circadian lighting, integration, and data can all enhance the role of lighting in a building.
Education is key to adding value. The technological advancement of LED lighting and lighting controls has dramatically increased demand for expertise in effectively selecting, designing, installing, commissioning, and maintaining lighting systems.
This is why the mission of the Lighting Controls Academy (LCA, formerly the Lighting Controls Association) remains so important. Founded 25 years ago, the LCA today offers comprehensive education through our parent organization’s learning platform, NEMA Academy, in addition to a website that is loaded with valuable information and resources. From articles (such as this special supplement), courses, sponsored design awards, and a hands-on NYControlled workshop to a new series of sequence of operations templates, the LCA plays a pivotal role in leveling up lighting practitioners through education.
The LED revolution remains loaded with potential for high-quality design and advanced lighting controls. Overall, the LED lighting revolution appears to have won, but I’d argue that it’s only entering its next exciting phase—one in which lighting quality and the occupant experience is on par or eclipses energy savings in the technology’s value equation and features an even more prominent role for advanced lighting controls.
