How Controls Can Solve Color-matching Issues Created by Value Engineering

By Randy Reid

During most of my career, matching the color of lights has always posed an issue. It started with metal halide lamps. A GE MVR400 had a different color from the Philips MH400/U. A contractor had to ensure that all the metal halide lamps came from the same manufacturer. Of course, even the same lamps by the same manufacturer could still vary in color, so it was important that the metal halide lamps were all manufactured in the same batch. In addition, most end users did not replace all their lamps at the same time, so new lamps and aged lamps, even from the same company, would have different colors. The same thing was true with fluorescent. It was a mess!

Today, we have luminaires that are designed to have different colors. With RGBW, it is as Yogi Berra once said, “Deja vu all over again.”

John Busch, Regional Manager for Leviton, shared a valuable tip for matching colors – something simple that had never occurred to me.

Leviton sold the controls on a major theme park hotel job in Carlsbad, CA. A lighting designer specified several high-end luminaires, and the job became value-engineered. While value engineering can work on many jobs, it is not always a good idea, especially where color is involved. Different fixtures rated for 3000K may look different. When red, green and blue are thrown into the mix, things can get messy. It is one thing to control the color temperature and quite another to control the hue.

With different luminaires from 6 different manufacturers, some specified, others not, there was a real problem in matching colors. The lobby, restaurant and play areas all had different luminaire brands. Normally, one would use two 0-10v systems, one for the intensity and the other for shifting the white. But, sometimes one needs to control the hue as well as the color temperature. This is where DMX came in. DMX allows the color of each luminaire to be individually tuned to match the other luminaires. Although DMX is more expensive than 0-10v, it solved the color matching issue for this hotel.

Solving color issues caused by value engineering shows the value of bringing in a professional company like Leviton that has worked with almost all manufacturers and has extensive experience with getting different luminaires to work together on the same system.

John also shared that there are no steadfast rules when it comes to dimming preferences. My belief is that ALL restaurants want slow and warm dimming to set the proper mood, but John explained that is not always the case. “Some restaurants may want slow and warm dimming during a portion of the evening, but in their busy times, they may want a bit of a jolt from their lighting, which can be an unconscious trigger encouraging guests to leave, and this helps them turn their tables faster.” If you can turn a table five times instead of four, you can increase revenue by 20%. That is huge!

This is where Leviton’s Sapphire Touch Screens come into play. Sapphire Touch Screens allow staff to create customized scenes and schedules to adjust to predetermined lighting levels based on the time of day, all the while providing energy savings. John further explained, “The staff can easily override the predetermined scenes when needed.”

On slow nights guests can linger all they want, but when the line is out the door, it might be time for the manager to touch that Sapphire screen and increase top line revenue. ■