Here’s a long-ish rant. People just don’t care (not the members here, as you’ll see).

Beginning with the first artificial light source (flame) up to the advent of LED, the vast majority of light sources were roughly the same shape. Over the centuries, and especially the last 2-3 centuries, people have spent lots of time and brain power to devise reflectors, refractors and diffusers for the light sources, most with great success.

Once the classic, non-LED electric light designs became mainstream on the market, this opened up the field of lighting designers, both for fixtures and for architecture. The field of lighting design for architecture became very proficient at its mandate. As a result, most public places had excellent lighting that was relatively glare free and did a good job at lighting the space. Think of louvred fluorescent, Holophane glass with metal halide, concentric ring glare shields, etc. Nice and easy on the eyes, mostly.

Some fixtures had ‘desirable’ glare in the sense that they doubled as sort of beacons. Think streetlights with refractors. Around here, highways are not lit, but exit ramps are. The sideways glare of the ramp streetlights could be seen from quite a distance, enabling drivers to judge where the exit was before arriving upon it.

Parallel to all this is the advent of light quality. Incandescent and halogen pretty much take the cake despite their power consumption. Fluorescent and ceramic metal halide have become very good at it, too, despite their slight shortcomings. All in all, they produce very nice, high quality light.

Almost as if every great thing must end, the advent of LED pretty much destroyed a large part of all this development. The directionality of the light source is ‘too good for it’s own good’. I get it that people want to save money ; I do too. However, emitting lumens at all costs is not a very elegant way of going about it. How many public places now have glare bombs instead of the meticulously calculated lighting, carefully chosen by lighting architects ? Honestly, it has been distracting to visit some places because of it. This past week, I visited an international grocery store, very niche and quite posh, that used to be lit by nice Holophane metal halide fixtures. They were replaced by LED flat panels that resemble six fluorescent lamps, fixtures that are commonly used in gymnasiums. The softness of the lighting is gone, glare having taken its place. While I was in that store, I came to the conclusion that people just don’t care. It lights, it costs less to operate, what more do you want ?

I’ll end this post with a list of ‘improvements’ that don’t really improve the situation :
-recessed lights that are not really recessed and make very bright spots on an unlit ceiling ;
-narrow strip lighting that is way brighter than any T8 or T5HO fluorescent ;
-all sorts of lamps that have very pronounced, ‘hard’ flicker ;
-wrong fixture type when replacing older technology with LED ;
-diminished light quality, light that ‘falls flat’ onto the surfaces (mostly CRI issues) ;
-highway features that are not noticeable enough in the dark, such as highway exits, because LED streetlights do not emit side light in the distance (‘beacon’ effect described earlier).

Many thanks to all that have made it to the end of my post. I’m sure you understand my predicament.

Yes, refractive optics were a revolution in the lighting industry, and we're still seeing them used with LED lighting products today. More lighting companies than ever are a part of the IES. There are constant innovations happening within.

As far as glare goes, it was prevalent with pretty much every light source. From bare incandescent lamps in radial wave fixtures, to highly specular reflectors in fluorescent high-bays, to HID acorn post-tops, to the flat panel SMD LED flood lights. But yes, there are very good examples of glare-free light out there. Holophane's PrismGlo®️ lineup is a prime example. The Kim Lighting Ouro is another one. More and more LED luminaire manufacturers are figuring out how to eliminate glare as much as possible without detracting from the lumen output. The Cree RSW, for example, has LED diodes on either side of the fixture, but utilizes a frosted glass diffuser to even out the "hot spots."

Sure, incandescent and halogen have a perfect CRI of Ra 100. That's hard to beat. LED and CMH have come really close, though. There's a Safeway near me that has close to 200 Lithonia Lighting IBG LED high-bays. They're all 3,000K and have a CRI of Ra 90. I don't believe I have ever been inside of a building that was more well-lit, glare-free and colorful.

I think two crucial reasons as to why we see such shoddy examples of LED lighting in public are cost and regulations. Many LED parking lot luminaires cost $1,000 or more apiece. Such fixtures are made with quality components, materials, and have a myriad of mounting and control options and other accessories available. With the way America's economy is operating now (not sure if you Canadians are experiencing the same issues as us), it's very difficult to be able to afford stuff like that. That's why we see so many generic, nondescript LED spatulas and flyswatters everywhere; they only cost around $200 apiece.

Numerous cities and towns throughout the country are wanting to reduce the amount of sky glow, which may be part of the reason why LED luminaires have such a focused beam of light to reduce unnecessary light spill. There are some luminaires that offer semicutoff optics (AEL Autobahn), but they're aren't too many. Another thing to mention is that during the '70s and '80s, there were lots of innovative fixture designs, but a good amount of them were not dark sky friendly; since then, efforts have been made to significantly reduce the issue.

Hope this explanation helps.

I think in particular with low cost retrofits, is that the companies that perform them tend to sell a "one size fits all" solution at the expense of light quality and glare control. Stocking a few generic LED luminaire types costs a lot less than carefully evaluating the space, how the architectural design plays with the lighting design, the quality of light and CCT desired and then selecting a suitable luminaire. 


That's probably one of the reasons behind the popularity of things like like those LED panels used to replace fluorescent troffers with better glare control such as indirect troffers, louvered troffers, louvered fixtures, etc. They're cheap, replace everything from wraps, strips, troffers to louvers and to the bean counters are popular for that reason. Unfortunately that price point comes at the cost of light quality, repair-ability and glare control.

Unfortunately a lot of people convert to LED looking to save money, and hence will tend to install the cheapest LED light that they could get their hands on. Newer buildings and full renovations on the other hand where the LED luminaires were specified by the architect tend to look a lot better than low cost retrofits.

I think the root of this problem isn't with LED, but more with low cost retrofits that ignore the original architectural design. Even during the T12 to T8 era there were a lot of tacky retrofits. I've seen stuff like recessed T12 fluorescent luminaires integrated into the ceiling slat system get replaced with surface mounted T8 wraps. The recessed T12 luminaires were tandem wired so it was probably a lot cheaper to throw on surfaced mounted T8 wraps. Two lamp T12 louvers to single lamp T8 wraps conversions were also common. And I've also seen stuff like recessed 100w MV cans get replaced with surface mounted T8 wraps.

Then there were the T12 8ft slimline to tandem T8 retrofits, in once instance I saw original 1960s turrets get hacked up with tandem T8 and generic reflectors. Finally original elements such as cove lighting, railing lighting were typically disconnected during these retrofits.

I'd honestly love to see the old designs get a LED successor, something like a LED louvered fixture would be really cool IMO.   

In reading both of your replies, I believe my rant is more towards the retrofit market. I'm not doubting the work of currently employed lighting architects out there, but I am rather lamenting poorly done retrofits, with the cheapest equipment they can find out there.

@joseph_125 : I had sort of forgotten that for a while, the T8 wraps were the solution to any retrofit. Those were awful, too !

Yeah I agree. In general anything that resembles an LED “panel” be it those “floodlights” seen outside of buildings or the type replacing troffers in the ceiling.

Yet I have seen some decent LED replacements, for example the Marshall’s store here relaxes their fluorescent troffer fixtures with LED ones that look like the parabolic “egg crate” style troffers. I find the light quality with these is great and they also look nice. I wish more places would go with these.

@sol- The reason that LEDs don't have the "beacon" affect is because they have a maximum 90-degree cutoff due to the lack of bowl or refractor with most LED designs. Here is an Aussie LED with a bowl!
https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.4110939,149.578718,3a,15y,136.7h,96.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sIaV_1JE7eC7J8e8N1Bo-Zw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDgyOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Is there any advantage for 90* cutoff optics compared to bowl or refractor?

Yes, less light pollution and lower wattage requirements because no light is ‘lost’ by ‘escaping’ in the ‘wrong direction’.

But what about light being reflected from the ground?

Exactly…

But what about light being reflected from the ground?

That's practically a constant, regardless of what light pattern you use. Most dark colored asphalt absorbs most light.

I think all of the aforementioned issues will be completely solved in another decade or two. Let us not forget that in the early days of electric lighting, similar or exactly the same complaints were made. We (the world) needs some more development before everything is as it should be.

That said - the most glare-y lighting system i know, were the metal halide lamps that were very common about a decade ago. I've never liked those. Whether they're little 35w shop spotlights or big floodlights to light parking lots, they always felt 'off' to me in a way LED (or HPS, or LPS, or fluorescent) just don't.
I remember buying clothes a few years ago from a WE store, with spot lights, probably halide. I had to take the trousers i was looking at to a window to see how they actually looked.

Finally, people indeed just don't actively care about things that they don't know about. Maybe glare bothers them, but they're fully unaware of the fact that things can be done about it. The things that are so obvious here, are completely unknown to others. A groundskeeper or maintenance staff member has to know a bit of everything, but it's fairly safe to assume most of those people only know the difference between spot lights and normal lights. If you're lucky, they know color temperature too. I have no clue if lighting tech is taught in vocational school if you want to learn to become building maintenance, or whether such a study even exists. The maintenance/groundskeepers i know, come from all random walks of life and haven't followed a formal education for it.

Most people in Israel, judging the intensity of the light of lamps by their surface brilliance (Candela)(Hence they saying that LED is very bright), rather than the overall output in the area and the ground (Lumens and Lux).

I know your pain OP.

Yeah. I gotta wear sunglasses after dusk to go around town, the shitty LEDs installed by the council are so bright you can't see a thing because of the glare, but as with everything here this happened due to rampant corruption, the local government has "friends" who just happen to bulk import crap LED streetlights from China, well, gotta help those friends, right? fill their pockets with part of that sweet taxpayer money they collect... so that happened.

Back when I was a kid the town only had tear drop lights hanging at intersections and some pole mounted metal halides, and it was bright enough to clearly see whether you were on foot or in a car, now they've reused the same poles but installed TWO HUNDRED WATT LEDS IN THEM, and 6500K CCT to make it worse, you can imagine how bright that is, they're ~4.5m high, super close to the ground. It's the kind of cheap integrated fitting that's bare LEDs and an aluminium housing, light is horrible, and they look lame during the day.

I kid you not I'm 54km away from the town and the glare is clearly visible from my room, if I point a telescope at it I can spot some individual lights, that's how bright they are. It's more noticeable if it's cloudy, there's a big light spot in the sky over where the town and the city further away are. That didn't happen with the older lights.

But that's how it is, morons at the council must unironically believe BRIGHTER IS BETTER MAKE IT BRIGHTER, PUMP UP THE BRIGHTNESS COME ON MATE.

Commercial locations are the same, market is flooded with shitty "UFO" style LEDs with no diffuser or anything, those things are good enough for a warehouse hanging 10m high but not for a grocery store... it's either that or the horrible plastic retrofit LED tubes with a light that's so blue I look like a smurf, CRI for those things must be around 40, at best. I don't think you can find them in first world countries, they're specifically made for "developing nations", hmm... developing backwards when it comes to lighting.

It seems that in general now, a great deal of people care little if at all about aesthetics and just want cheap and easy. Thus, people wearing sweats and pajamas to the store, apartments made of ugly corrugated metal, cars that all look generic and soulless, computers that look like Fisher Price toys and light fixtures that are basically plastic boxes with diodes stuck in them.

It was bad enough seeing fluorescent installations with missing diffusers, mismatched colored lamps, or HIDs mislamped, or bad CFL retrofits. But now everything can be cobbed even if it looks horrendous or simply replaced with a cheap abomination that produces more glare than useful light.

I think another problem is that good lighting designers cost money that people don’t want to pay; again they want cheap and there’s ways to do things more cheaply, so they do. Anyone can order on Amazon and wire in a fixture and it’ll light up….who cares about glare, lumens, color temperature, beam pattern?

It us up to those of us that DO care about quality lighting and aesthetics to at least adorn our own places with good lighting and try to advocate for it in public areas where we can….lots of good LED fixtures do exist, but they aren’t the cheap ones and they may be hard to obtain. It could also be that modern designers and installers aren’t getting good training or simply the market is saying, do the job as quickly and inexpensively as possible unless a particular customer pays extra to have it done to their exacting specifications.

@arcblue : That is exactly how I feel. Architects and lighting designers work together and the building is built and lit nicely. It’s when either the lighting is deemed too inefficient or the bean counters want to reduce wattage that the lighting design plan is thrown out the window and they install whatever is the cheapest they can find.

Homeowners are not always better, I’ve seen some badly lit homes, too.