Cree Wants to Make Your Office Lighting Less Ugly

NO MATTER HOW much headway LED lighting makes in your home, you're still likely stuck with unsightly fluorescents at work---or pretty much anywhere else you spend most of your indoor waking hours. A product from LED specialist Cree hopes to change that, using a new kind of optical technology to save you from the washed-out grossness that plagues cubicles everywhere.

Cree's new LN series suspended LED tubes are similar to the fluorescent counterparts you're accustomed to, at least until you turn them on. That's when they trade the familiar jaundiced glow for the softer, more palatable hues that have made LEDs a legitimate alternative to incandescents bulbs, to say nothing of more garish corporate fluorescents.

The aesthetic benefits aren't limited to the lights themselves; the LN light fixture simply look better than the buzzing overhead blocks that fluorescents call home. "You can see those panels that come out to the side and go up at an angle," points out Cree vice president of product strategy Gary Trott. "Those are about a quarter inch thin, whereas a fluorescent fixture might be 3-4 inches deep. It makes a far cleaner, more elegant look." They serve a practical purpose as well, directing light upward and diffusing it across the ceiling, rather than shining it directly down into your eyeballs. While so-called suspended ambient lighting of this sort is already popular among those companies that can afford it, a cost-competitive LED version is a welcome, energy-efficient alternative.

That's not to say the LN series is the first suspended LED lighting solution destined for offices; Phillips offers a handful similar options as well, as does GE. But Cree vice president of product strategy Gary Trott points to his product's efficiency of 110 lumens per watt, compared to the 70-90 lumens per watt you might find in a comparable fluorescent tube. Perhaps more importantly, the LN series incorporates what Cree is calling WaveMax, a new technology that purports to allow for more customizability without sacrificing efficiency.

"WaveMax allows you to have the trifecta of benefits that hasn't been possible before: control, efficiency, and comfort," says Trott. It does so by taking a more fine-tuned approach to light extraction, giving more granular levels of control over the final effect.