How do lighting designers spend their time?
The short answer: most time is spent researching lighting and lighting controls systems
Lighting system designers earn an average of $91,698, according to the 2021 Consulting-Specifying Engineer Salary Survey. Lighting designers are tasked with several things, earning their paycheck by: researching, writing specifications and designing new construction and retrofit/renovation projects. Details about how lighting designers break up their time is outlined in the 2022 Specifying Considerations for Lighting & Lighting Controls report.
Most lighting designers expect to see growth in projects that include LEDs, occupancy sensors or multilevel lighting or dimming. These designers are specifying lighting systems into office buildings (71%), college and university buildings (54%), hospitals and health care facilities (51%) and industrial, manufacturing and warehouse buildings (51%).
In this report, four key areas were studied:
- Researching and specifying.
- Vendor considerations.
- Smart lighting systems.
- COVID-19 and specialty systems.
Lighting designers work in a wide variety of building types, with office buildings topping the list again. Courtesy: Consulting-Specifying Engineer
In particular, manufacturers will be interested in research and specification habits of lighting and lighting control systems. For example, when researching and specifying lighting and lighting control systems, the average engineer spends 34% of their time researching vendors on their own, 29% evaluating vendors after speaking with their representatives, 12% sending proposal-like requests for information and 25% writing the specification.
Because about four in 10 respondents to the study indicated the work within a team or committee to design lighting systems, it’s especially important that these manufacturers reach the engineer at the right time in the research or specification process.
Smart lighting systems are specified by 43% of respondents, with 22% specifying smart systems more in the past 18 months than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Smart systems have been recently specified by engineers for lighting systems that include LEDs (90%), multilevel lighting or dimming (60%) and daylight harvesting (56%).
For additional details and to download the full report, see the 2022 Specifying Considerations for Lighting & Lighting Controls study.
Do you have experience and expertise with the topics mentioned in this content? You should consider contributing to our CFE Media editorial team and getting the recognition you and your company deserve. Click here to start this process.
