Project Overview

Premium LED lighting company, Brightgreen, have designed the world’s first square beamed downlight, titled D900 Cube. The light’s unique square beam offers unparalleled control and efficiency for the architecture, building and design industries.

Brightgreen’s D900 Cube was designed with the goal of creating an energy efficient lighting solution that not only provided adequate brightness comparable to halogens, but also was architecturally and aesthetically satisfying.

Through harnessing LED technology, these objectives were not only achieved, but were hugely surpassed, with a square beam downlight that exceeds the brightness of halogens and sits atop the industry efficacy chart.

The D900 Cube’s square beam means fewer lights are required to achieve the same lighting levels as circular downlights, offering greater efficiency.

Its square shape prevents light beams overlapping and eliminates dark corners forming, guiding light to follow the straight edges of a room and evenly dispersing light.

This groundbreaking design resulted in high praise from architects and lighting concept designers, who finally have the tools available that they have been craving to create lighting designs that truly paint rooms with light without dull spots or shadows.

Organisation

Brightgreen

Team

The D900 Cube was David O'Driscoll's design, however we now have a number of very innovative designers, physicists and engineers continuously trying to find the next breakthrough, long-lasting innovation. Our newer products are the work of a team, with input from different minds. As a company we are tightknit but growing quickly.

The D900 Cube sums up everything Brightgreen strives for as a company, with its innovation, uniqueness, long-lifespan and high quality representing all of Brightgreen's goals, including putting an end to planned obsolescence.

While the D900 Cube was designed by David O'Driscoll, we believe corporate culture is number one in any business. We are lucky enough to have an amazing team that have a common purpose and love hanging out with each other and innovating new products and business processes.

Project Brief

The D900 Cube is a state-of-the-art LED downlight and true game-changer, with the long sought-after square beam solution finally being realized, lighting designers can finally change the way they approach new designs. While its lumen output of 903 already makes it one of the brightest LEDs on the market, the revolutionary square beam further increases its effectiveness. Enabling light to spread more evenly in a room, the D900 Cube’s square beam means fewer lights are needed than ever before to light a space.

Being a member of Brightgreen’s D900 range, the Cube leads the industry efficacy chart, with an efficacy of over 56 lumens/watt. Its powerful lumen count surpasses that of halogens, which, according to the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE), provide just 720 lumens. A warm colour temperature of 3000K makes it adaptable to many situations, residentially or commercially.

When matched with its high Colour Rendering Index (CRI) of 90, the light quality of the D900 Cube reigns supreme when compared to other energy efficient lighting types, such as compact fluorescents, which has a CRI of just 50. Its high CRI allows people and furnishings to look their best, and colours their most vibrant.

Project Need

The D900 Cube is the world’s first square beamed LED downlight. This groundbreaking innovation has not only opened up the lighting market, but also changed the way that architects, specifiers and home builders can plan their lighting designs as they are no longer restricted by circular beams and their hit-and-miss light dispersion.
The revolutionary square beam downlight allows rooms to filled with light much more efficiently, as the rooms themselves are square. No longer are there overlapping beams in one area, with dull shadows in the others, which can occur with common, circular beams.

The D900 Cube allows rooms to be ‘painted with light’, without the dark areas and unnecessary beam overlaps. These architectural and aesthetic features of the D900 Cube have been well celebrated, with architects finding it to be their long sought after lighting solution.

The optics and fascia of the light have also been recognised, as their clean and timeless design won’t look out of place in 20 years time, when the lights are still operating.

The D900 Cube also boasts a number of other innovative features:
• 903 lumens of light (halogens on average have 720 according to DCCEE).
• 16 Watts (comparable halogens use 50W).
• 70,000 hour lifespan, equating to 30 years.
• CRI of 90.
• Free of mercury, lead, hexavalent with no other toxic materials present, or created during use.
• On board thermal monitoring system controls operating temperature, resulting in no risk of fire.

Design Challenge

While discovering and understanding the market’s needs was not overly difficult, designing the product to meet all of these needs proved to be a challenge.

The product idea caused a ‘square peg, round hole’ situation, where difficulty was struck trying to match the square beam and fascia with the circular heat sink and cutout, which was necessary to achieve optimum operation and ease of installation.

This also raised another issue: enabling the light to be gimbaled. Gimballing is an important feature of downlights, but the square fascia and round heat sink again caused issues.

As gimballing is standard on downlights, it was paramount that this issue was overcome. Gimballing was achieved, with 15 degree tilting further increasing the versatility and efficacy of the D900 Cube, ensuring its adaptability for all rooms and different lighting needs.
It was also important to make sure the D900 Cube was compatible with all dimming systems available on the market to ensure easy and able installation for everyone.

Once designed with all market needs and objectives achieved, the D900 Cube passed testing, received patents and met all applicable standards, which is a testament to the design team.

Sustainability

The key function of Brightgreen as a company is to promote sustainability through its products, with the goal of ending planned obsolescence. This is shown in the entire design process of the D900 Cube, from manufacturing through to usage.

The D900 Cube is so efficient, come the end of its product life, it will have saved 2590 kilowatts when compared to halogens, which are the only luminaires with a comparable brightness.
• Long life: Its 70,000 hour lifetime makes it the longest lasting downlight on the market. No only does this buck the trend where products are made to break, it ensures efficiency long into the future.

• Recyclable materials: The D900 Cube is made entirely from recyclable materials and can be disassembled by hand or sold back to Brightgreen at the end of its product life. These measures ensure correct recycling and means the light can be refitted or reformed.

• Energy efficient: The super-low wattage of the D900 Cube means it will continue to be efficient long into the future.

• Small carbon footprint: The D900 Cube has a low embodied energy equivalent to 12.3kg of carbon. It is efficient enough to neutralize this after 252hrs of use in Australia, 0.36% into its designed life.

• Completely non-toxic: It is made without any toxic or hazardous materials, including mercury and lead, which are common in other lighting types. This means it creates no toxic by-products and causes no trouble when recycling.