with all the controversy caused earlier in the year by Elon Musk emailing his employees to
return to office or depart Tesla in the subsequent backlash from Scott Farquhar it seems that the
ongoing debate about working from home versus the office is far from over so now seems like a good
time to discuss the subject of office lights and the impact it can have on people working under
them of course for some of us it would be nice to have any lights at all for many years a suspended
ceiling was the way forward for an office space and it does have numerous advantages using them
however led to the rise of direct lighting usually in the form of a 600 by 600 or 600 by 1200 fitting
that just dropped into the ceiling grid direct lighting is where the light fitting points down
and illuminates what's below it now that's great at work plane level however the spaces and the
light we work in are three-dimensional and the upper portion of a room whereby consequence
quite dark and gave many offices a kind of cave like feeling and also led to poor uniformity in
some cases with some areas over lit and others underlit however in recent years we've seen a
change in style for many office spaces and even classrooms where the ceiling is simply the soffit
or underside of the concrete floor above to reduce the unpleasant echoing that this would normally
produce panels of acoustic absorbing material are installed and suspended light fittings are used
but why suspended instead of fixed to the concrete ceiling well this allows for electricians to make
use of what's called direct and indirect lighting and the principle is perfectly exemplified in this
Horizon fitting from Robus it's a really sleek modern minimalist fitting that would look as
home in a modern office as it would a classroom and it comes with two types of reflector as you
can see here one is this prismatic version and the other is a low glare version with these metallic
diffusers that offers a unified glare rating or UDR of less than 19 making it perfect for all
educational spaces in school buildings as well as other applications where reduced glare can make
for a more comfortable working environment such as offices and similar the fittings can be in
interlinked up to 30 fittings for the Prismatic version which gives you a run of 42 meters and the
URG version can have 45 fittings linked in a run which gives you a length of 63 meters this allows
for connections to be made at one end of a run so that you don't need to get a separate cable
out to the other end when it comes to linking the fittings together a lot of thought has gone
into making the process as quick and as easy as possible we've got two fittings here that we're
going to join together and the first thing to do is to remove the little rubber bungs from these
four holes then we undo the screws that fix the end caps on so that's the screws on the top here
and then there's ones inside here accessed via the little holes that were revealed a moment ago
once they're undone the end caps can be slid out and we get to see one of the really great
features of this joining process inside the ends of the fittings are these little plug and socket
connectors removing the caps from these we can then clip them into each other and the fittings
are now electrically connected to each other now we get the joining bracket and introduce it into
the ends of the fitting and it's just a matter of aligning this with both ends of the fittings and
then sliding those together once you've butted the joint up we do up the four screws in the base of
the bracket via the terminal access plates to lock it into place and then replace the bungs then it's
just a matter of clipping on these little black plates that conceal the joint thus maintaining
that sleek professional look and jobs are good now as the Horizon fittings stand they will provide
direct lighting as we described earlier where the light shines down from the fitting to the
surfaces to be illuminated and they can even be mounted directly to a surface however if
you want to create a truly well-lit space that feels light and airy with good uniformity then
you want to get some direct indirect light going on indirect lighting is where you shine light up
against the ceiling and it then reflects down to the surfaces to be illuminated this removes
the issue of a darkened space at the top of the room and generally improves uniformity as the
light is diffused more effectively however the efficiency of the design will be reduced as some
of the light is absorbed by the ceiling instead of being reflected so the best solution for lighting
an office or a classroom is to use both of these methods in the combined direct indirect fashion
the Robus Horizon starts life is just a direct light fitting but it has the option to add on
this extra accessory that's basically an LED strip light to the top of the fitting and it literally
couldn't be easier to fit you just remove this little cap here revealing three pins and then
the additional fitting just goes onto those three pins and then clips in just like this
and if we ask my glamorous assistant to power it up there you go you've now got both up and down
light from the same fitting giving you the option to have both direct and indirect lighting in the
same space that gives you all the associated benefits of each method while minimizing the
disadvantages as well some additional features of the fittings include on the top of the luminaire
with the prismatic diffuser there's a little switch here that allows you to change the colour
temperature you can switch it between a warm 3000 Kelvin a cool 4000 Kelvin and an almost daylight
5700 Kelvin which will all have their application depending on the environment that it's being used
in it's worth noting though there's a warning label under here that tells us not to change
the colour temperature of the fitting when it's on and they've put two exclamation marks on here so
you know they're serious the uplight accessory matches the fitting that it connects to if you
look closely at the two side by side here you can see some key differences this one has more LEDs on
it than the other and you can see that they're grouped in twos and they're slightly different
colours one sort of orangey and one of them is more yellow this is because this strip is designed
to be used on the Prismatic fitting where you can change the colour temperature and by having the
two LEDs on and off in different combinations it ensures that the colour of the light out of
the top of the fitting matches the colour of the light out of the bottom which is good because it
would look awful otherwise the other LED accessory also matches the 4000 Kelvin of the UGR fitting
and it's pretty important that you get the right accessory with the right fitting as they won't be
compatible with each other the fittings also come with brackets that allow you to fix it directly
to the ceiling allowing for direct lighting only and if you're going for the suspended
option then there's a separate suspension kit with a clever mechanism to allow you to get the
fitting perfectly level and this opens up the option for that direct indirect lighting that
we've discussed so all in all a really nice fitting with some great accessories that means
it's suitable for all kinds of applications if you're interested in lighting check out our free
training packages in the description and our other videos right here thank you very much for watching