Firm educates, creates custom lighting solutions
Call it a quality of light issue. Not much debate swirls around the topic, but how retail, industrial or office spaces are lit can play a role in an employee’s health and job satisfaction, and can make a huge impression on customers and clients, says Steve Klein and Lynn Howard, co-owners of Klein Howard Lighting, 338 N. Milwaukee St., Milwaukee.
Klein and Howard are lighting consultants who help clients set up office, industrial, retail and residential spaces. The two most common problems are that building designers calculate lighting needs based on square footage, and because clients want to save money on projects, the oldest and least expensive technologies are often used.
"Their calculations say nothing about the quality of illumination as it’s produced in the space," says Klein. "All it tells you is how much there is and where it is. That’s no indicator whatsoever, in our point of view, as to what a proper lighting design should do."
According to Klein Howard, lighting should contribute to productivity and alleviate boredom. That point was made clear when a local health-care provider called Klein Howard to evaluate a facility where its billing department worked. The space was a "windowless box," and employees were cramped into the smallest of spaces. The lighting was so bad, employees were bringing in lamps from home to light their cubicles and, according to Klein, employee turnover was extremely high. Klein suspected the employees disliked going into work because the quality of the industrial-strength lighting was stressing them out.
Klein came up with an idea to simulate the sun’s pattern throughout the day within the office. He had custom ceiling panels manufactured to look like clouds and had the clouds staggered in height from the warehouse-like ceiling. Lights reflected off of the "clouds" back down to employees sitting in cubicles. Then he designed a track around the office on which a light shaped like the sun travels throughout the day. The result: It not only reduced the counter-productive turnover, but employees began to enjoy going to work. In fact, employees enjoyed it so much that they began bringing in beach chairs and wearing sunglasses.
Klein also reduced the wattage of the lamps from 400 to 250.
"More is not better in our business," Klein said. "More can be worse. It inevitably boils down to a very disciplined study of something that may seem as arcane as looking at people in their faces and seeing the lines drawn on that person by tension, fatigue, stress. They could look in the mirror and not know that their problem is that it’s the lousy lighting in their peripheral fields reflecting off of the tasks that’s actually slowing them down.
"They’re actually disabled by their lighting system, and that happens more often than not," Klein said.
The firm – started in 1998 although Klein and Howard have known each other for more than 12 years – lets its work do the talking for them. Its client base is all from word-of-mouth referrals. The passion of Klein and Howard is evident, especially when speaking with Klein. He said there comes a point where good lighting designs cease being just lighting and turn into art. It’s as if it becomes a spiritual experience for him.
Another common problem with lighting is using the wrong lamp (light bulb). Most people still think that fluorescent bulbs are made in soft white and cool white. In reality, there are four colors or temperatures.
"The problem is the quality of the colors that those (soft and cool) lamps produce is so poor that it completely grays out any palette," Klein said.
As strange as that may sound, Klein recalls being called in by an interior decorator that was asked to completely redecorate the interior at Strong Investments in Menomonee Falls. No expense was spared for the interior furnishing but, for some reason, nothing looked good. Klein walked into the building and immediately knew the cause: Strong was using warm lamps and fixtures, the warm lamp being very poor at color-rendering.
"They did a test area, and the test area became the entire building," Klein said. "You could see it with your own eyes – everything came alive. The reason (for the graying) was the color was reflecting off the palette and actually reflecting improper color perspective rather than dampening the view of the interior."
Hospitals are also notorious for using the wrong temperature lamps, often making patients look worse than they are; however, hospitals do use excellent color-rendering lights such as in delivery rooms where they check a newborn’s coloring.
Klein Howard does approximately 25% of its work in people’s homes; the rest is done in office, retail and manufacturing facilities.
One of its office/manufacturing clients is James Office Equipment. Lola Tegeder, president of the company, had worked with Klein before he went out on his own. She immediately thought of him when the company moved from Waukesha to Brookfield. Klein designed accent lights to show off the company’s office equipment in the showroom and, more importantly, lighting the office space where employees worked.
"I find that extremely important to me, that they had lighting that wouldn’t strain their eyes and provided a nice healthy environment to work in," Tegeder said.
Of Klein, Tegeder said: "He’s very creative and very emotional with his lighting. He wants to do the best and he’ll go overboard to satisfy and work with a client."
March 29, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
