Factory Lighting Guide
Written by Cory PetersonLast Updated Mar 3, 2025
Published on Dec 4, 2020
Understanding industrial lighting that spaces like manufacturing plants, factories, and other industrial spaces need is very crucial for the owners as well as the electricians who carry out the process.
The process gets further complicated by the high risk of accidents and other hazards that exist in these spaces.
Both things complicate each other as poor lighting increases the risk factor significantly in industrial environments.
IES ( Illuminating Engineering Society ) and ANSI ( American National Standards Institute ) have designed factory lighting standards that have been readily adopted by OSHA to ensure occupational safety standards.
Click Here to See All Our LED Industrial Lights for Factories and Manufacturing Plants
Industrial Lighting Standards: ANSI / IES-RP-7-1991
The metric of measurement for light levels is called lux (one lumen per square meter) and a lux meter follows the same metric.
While the ANSI/IES guidelines set the essential conditions for lighting systems, they are also flexible enough to include all individual demands.
Like, the ANSI/IES standards recommend around 10-20 foot candle light levels in areas like lobbies or dining areas where visual clarity is not a crucial need.
Here are the recommended foot candles we would suggest for factories, manufacturing, and warehousing.
Recommended Foot Candles for Manufacturing and Warehouse Facilities
Factory Lighting
- Coarse Material Processing: 10 fc
- Medium Material Processing: 30 fc
- Fine Material Processing: 50 fc
- Extra Fine Material Processing: 50-100 fc
- Wrapping, Packaging and Labeling: 30 fc
- Picking Stock: 30 fc
- Simple Assembly: 15-60 fc
- Medium Assembly: 25-100 fc
- Difficult Assembly: 50-200 fc
- Complicated Assembly: 50-200 fc
- Exacting Assembly and Inspection: 150-600 fc
- General Food Processing: 75 fc
Warehouse lighting
- Warehousing – Inactive Area: 5-10 fc
- Warehousing – Active – Large Items: 10-20 fc
- Warehousing – Active – Small Items: 15-60 fc
- Warehousing – Active – Medium Items: 20 fc
- Warehousing – Active – Fine Items: 20-50 fc
- Shipping and Receiving Area: 30 fc
- Receiving and Shipping Dock: 5-20 fc
- Receiving and Staging: 15-60 fc
- Maintenance and Shop Areas: 50 fc
- Cold Storage: 10-30 fc
- Open Warehouse: 10-30 fc
- Warehouse with Aisles: 10-30 fc
The Key to Industrial Lighting Design – Lighting Plans
The key to a successful lighting implementation using LED factory lights inside industrial buildings is to create a lighting plan. A lighting plan places high bay lights or low bay lights inside software, with a factory floor space loaded in, and creates a report showing lighting levels as well as how well the light is distributed across the floor. The plan ensures the right lighting is chosen to produce light where its needed. The lighting plan takes into account the factories space as well as ceiling height.
Why Industrial LED Lighting for Manufacturing Facilities and Factories is a Better Option
1. Higher Efficiency or Lumens Per Watt – Energy Efficient Lighting
The true efficiency of LED light fixtures is denoted by its luminous efficiency.
This is a measure of the lumens produced by the light for every watt of power it consumes, and this value can be used for the comparison of LED to other lamp types. This includes metal halides, fluorescent lights, and other traditional lighting fixtures.
LEDs have far higher efficiency than any other light. The efficiency ratings are even higher for high-quality LEDs.
How Do Long-term Savings Make Up for the Initial Cost?
The cost of high-efficiency LEDs is higher than low-efficiency bulbs. Similarly, the savings that they generate are much higher than the initial investment they require.
You can think of energy efficiency in terms of energy savings. The more efficient a LED fixture is, the lower your lighting bills will be
We recommend you choose high-efficiency LEDs for maximum savings with LED conversion.
Replacing Existing Fixtures Made Easy
We can replace almost any fixture with LED, one for one, including
- Metal halides
- High Pressure Sodium
- Halogen Light fixtures
- Incandescent bulbs
- Fluorescent bulbs
2. Lumens and Brightness
So much goes into picking the right fixture to achieve that perfect balance of light levels and light balance. Knowing what you need can make the difference between success and failure.
How Can You Determine the Ideal Lighting System?
This can be very difficult. We can help you with our lighting software that assesses your building layout. Creating a lighting plan determines the best fixture and the right amount of lumens to get the perfect lighting solution.
3. Adapts to Different Voltages
Understanding your current voltage requirements is key to picking the right lights. For the most part, there are two ranges: 100V-277V and 277-480V. Not all lights are available with high-voltage driver options.
These drivers automatically switch to your incoming voltage supply. So as long as your lights are within the upper and lower range of the driver you select, you’re all set.
3 Phase lighting is no issue either. Understanding how to wire 3 phase lighting to an LED Driver is key, but easy to do once you understand what and how to do it.
4. Options for High Temperatures
Heating problems in certain settings can seriously damage the LED lights. Thus, you need LED fixtures that remain resistant to temperature fluctuations beyond 50 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
If you’re looking for high temperature LED lights, we currently offer high temperature options ranging from 158F to 302F.
We do provide high-temperature resistant fixtures, but we recommend that you never install any fixture in the direct path of gas or hot air sources.
5. Better CRI ( Light Quality )
The color of any light is denoted by the CRI or color rendering index value. This helps us differentiate the color visibility of any object under the target light and sunlight.
The poor light color quality of HID lamps makes them unsuitable for various settings. The proper visible light color makes a huge difference in factory settings.
The color contrast and clarity come out properly.
We recommend LED lights with a CRI between 70 and 85. The standard is 70, which for the most part, will be ideal for most factory lighting needs.
CRI of LEDs
CRI values of over 70 are all good. If you want lights for special spaces where fine colors and detailing are crucial, go for 80-90 CRI.
6. Fixture Options
There are so many fixture options available, that while it’s easy for us to find the best option for your space, there are possibly too many options, making the process difficult. We offer:
Fixtures for Outdoor spaces
- Flood Lights
- Wall Packs
- Shoebox / Parking Lot Lighting fixtures
Fixtures with Lighting Controls
About The Author
Cory Peterson is Vice President of Marketing & Sales Operations at LED Lighting Supply where he focuses on improving customer experience and revenue operations. Cory writes about commercial & industrial lighting, along with topics important to contractors and facility managers. In his free time, Cory enjoys traveling, snorkeling, exercise and cooking.
