SIGHTLINES | Innovation in a Post-LED World: From broad strokes to subtle advances
Katherine Stekr and Jamie Devenger
If you were in the lighting industry in the early 2000s, you lived through some significant changes including the 2008 recession and the industry-wide transformation brought upon by LEDs. This new light source delivered unprecedented efficiency and opened the door to new possibilities in form and function, and we all became comfortable standing on the bleeding edge of technology. With LED sources now ubiquitous, the question becomes: What’s next? Across the industry, there’s a growing refrain that innovation just feels slower today. Often we hear many attendees leaving trade shows saying they didn’t see anything exciting or new; how is this possible? The disruptive leaps of the LED revolution are behind us, and today’s changes are harder to spot at first glance, especially when everyone has become so accustomed to big changes in our design tools. That perception misses an important part of the story: the initial arrival of LEDs was transformative, but there is just as much innovation happening today at a more micro, steady pace.
“Our industry needs to retrain itself to value incremental improvements.”
Until about 2010, designers worked within the constraints of fluorescent troffers, halogen lamps, and ballast-lamp combinations. LEDs broke the mold, wiping out old product categories and some companies that couldn’t adapt fast enough. Specifiers were forced to learn an entirely new technology. That jolt of change set expectations high—perhaps unrealistically so—for what future innovation should look like.
For a time, the industry was thrilled at efficiency gains, but many applications simply swapped LEDs into old housings. One of the truly new breakthroughs was tape light, which transformed how designers could illuminate spaces. Efficacy gains in this product category allow for so much more sophistication and precision in lighting designs. Beyond that initial big-bang effect, innovation became less apparent over time. All the major “paintbrushes” are already available, so many new advances are often micro-level tweaks that specifiers may not recognize as groundbreaking.
From a manufacturing perspective, it is important to now focus our innovation on details. In the push to become more efficient and smaller, we occasionally lost sight of critical performance factors such as glare control and clean execution into architecture. Those new priorities can make innovation harder to see for specifiers, since the progress is buried in details rather than splashy new form factors.
Designing products for easier installation and maintenance is a critical advance. Those efficiencies save time and labor on job sites, which frees up the budget for higher-quality lighting. The result is fewer compromises on performance just to meet cost constraints. These shifts highlight how the industry has moved from broad leaps to subtler, detail-driven advances—and why those details may prove even more impactful in the long run.
So, where could we look for larger and more “splashy” innovations? Tunable white, perhaps. Newer technology can enable narrower beams and strong color mixing, making the effect more precise and useful in architectural applications. The real opportunity is in tunable systems that deliver consistent color and strong optics without sacrificing ease of use. If designers can trust that a narrow beam will stay clean and color accurate across different applications, that’s a big step forward.
Tunable lighting often gets cut for cost reasons, even though it creates more inviting spaces. These systems can add a subtle sense of the passage of time, softening mornings and evenings and making offices or classrooms feel more comfortable and dynamic. Easier to power and wire products could reduce labor costs and make these products more viable in project budgets.
Within all this technical innovation, there is still real importance in balancing technological capability with the human experience. As companies compete to get people back into offices, lighting that mimics the comfort of home will be in demand. It’s difficult to pull someone out of a cozy house with task lamps, warm colors, and daylight into a gray office with flat overhead lights. If companies want people to be happier about returning, they’ll need to invest in well-thought-out, layered lighting that is comfortable.
We can’t forget the fundamentals of lighting. Spaces need contrast, balance, and daylight integration, not just raw lumen output. These fundamentals remain vital even with new technology. The opportunity now is for lighting designers and manufacturers to let go of traditional fixture forms and fully embrace the possibilities of LEDs. Too often we see fixtures that push as many lumens as possible without considering glare or occupant comfort. Just because we can provide 2,000 lumens from a ½-in. aperture does not mean we should.
The LEDs of today are far superior, allowing for precise beam control and compact footprints that were impossible with fluorescent or halogen. This not only means fewer fixtures are required but also that designers can rethink layouts entirely, using LEDs to achieve effects that were previously impractical. We have the opportunity to move past old rules of thumb and unlock fundamentally new design approaches, if designers are willing to adapt.
Sustainability expectations are also shaping design and manufacturing. Many clients are asking teams to follow sustainable best practices similar to LEED, even if they aren’t pursuing official certification. That expectation is helping push the industry to treat sustainability as the baseline, not an add-on.
Sustainability starts with materials—protecting human health and reducing carbon consumption—but extends to maintainability. Reducing embodied carbon in materials such as aluminum is important, but so is designing fixtures that can be upfitted over time. Creating systems with interchangeable parts that can extend lifespans and reduce waste is true innovation, even if it doesn’t look flashy on a trade show floor. Efficiency gains remain possible. Advances in power electronics and light engines can deliver more output in the same footprint and reduce voltage drop challenges. These improvements may not feel as dramatic as the early LED revolution, but they continue to push performance forward.
Our industry needs to retrain itself to value incremental improvements. LEDs forced the industry to move extraordinarily fast during their initial adoption, chasing efficiency gains and rushing products to market. Now there is time to circle back and fine-tune the things that were missed in that rush. A quick-connect detail that makes a cove install seamless may be just as innovative as an entirely new fixture.
As we previously noted, people often leave trade shows saying they didn’t see anything new. Yet, much of today’s innovation is in details that don’t grab headlines—connectors, optics, controls, sustainability measures—but are precisely the things that determine long-term performance.
The next leap likely won’t be about making LEDs smaller. It will be freeing ourselves from legacy forms and thinking about light delivery in entirely new ways. For too long we’ve been retrofitting LEDs into older lighting profiles. That made sense at first, but now that LEDs are mainstream, we have the chance to abandon designs based on what’s always been done and instead start with the LED itself and build outward from there. The real opportunity is to erase the memory of old forms and use the technology as a blank canvas for new tools, rather than continuing to force LEDs into yesterday’s categories.
The best lighting is the kind you don’t notice; it’s in harmony with the space. That’s where innovation should take us. When lighting is seamless with architecture and occupant comfort, it achieves what the early rush of LED adoption sometimes overlooked. The period of fine-tuning we are in now creates space for deeper innovation—albeit quieter; look for more thoughtful solutions at the next trade show and recognize how they are going to be the innovations that lead lighting technology into the next era.
Katherine Stekr is the principal and found-er of STEK Design Co. and has nearly two decades of lighting design experience.
Jamie Devenger, LEED AP BD+C, is chief innovation officer at QTL, where she leads R&D efforts and product development.
