COMMERCIAL LIGHTING APPLICATION
Food display lighting
Food display lighting is the clearest case where the light is doing commercial work. The same loaf of bread reads as fresh or as tired depending on the colour temperature it is seen under, and a counter lit evenly from above reads flatter than one where each product group is lit on its face.
The useful output in a food display is vertical illuminance on the product, not the horizontal average on the floor.
What this space needs
Colour temperature is chosen per product group
This is the point most often missed when a store is re-lit. Warm light suits bakery and cooked food; a more neutral light suits produce and chilled goods. Where several product groups sit on one run, they do not all want the same temperature.
Light the face, not the floor
A counter or a shelf display is judged from in front, so the light has to arrive on the product face at a usable angle. A raised general light level lights the aisle, not the food.
Fresh, chilled and ambient areas differ
A produce wall, a seafood counter on ice and an ambient bakery cabinet are three different lighting problems in one store. Planning them as one scene is what makes a food hall look uneven.
How to specify it
- Assign a colour temperature to each product zone rather than to the store, and confirm the assignment with the operator before ordering.
- Aim for the product face at a shallow enough angle to produce modelling rather than a flat wash, which is what makes fresh produce look three-dimensional.
- Keep the colour rendering high, because saturated colour is exactly what fresh food is being judged on.
- Confirm the track platform and the switched groups so ambient, chilled and display lighting can be run separately through the trading day.
Related pages
Buyer questions
Why use different colour temperatures in one food store?
Because different product groups are judged on different things. Warm light flatters bakery and cooked food, while produce and chilled goods usually read better under a more neutral light. Using one temperature throughout is simpler to specify but rarely the best result on the counter.
Is vertical or horizontal illuminance the right measure for a food display?
Vertical, on the product face. The customer reads the counter from in front, so a calculation that reports the average across the floor can look perfectly acceptable while the produce itself is under-lit.
Can an existing supermarket be re-lit without new cabling?
Where a track ceiling is already installed, the luminaires can be re-aimed and re-grouped along the existing rail, and the case notes for our supermarket fresh-food project describe exactly that approach. Where no rail exists, the rail, the adapter and the luminaires are specified as one system.