By George McClure
WAC Lighting is a family-owned company that manufactures all types of lighting fixtures and is known for its sustainable, energy-efficient, and technologically advanced products. Their extensive product line includes everything from recessed and track lighting systems to LED undercabinet lighting, bathroom vanity lights, wall lights and sconces, and outdoor lighting, as well as ceiling fans.
As a design-and-build manufacturer, WAC Lighting creates long-term relationships with lighting designers, architects, and distributors by developing innovative solutions to address the challenges they face. Here’s an inside look from our recent conversation with Patrick Laidlaw, Director of Business Development for Integration for AiSPIRE and WAC Lighting.
“From a design standpoint, people are now taking as much care of the outside of their homes as they do on the inside. We sell tunable white for inside applications because it enhances finishes, fabrics, and other decor. So, we thought, why not offer a tunable white product that does the same thing outside? We developed Colorscaping, which uses tunable white and full-color spectrum technologies to create dramatic outdoor lighting effects.”
George McClure: Please give us a little background on WAC Lighting.
Patrick Laidlaw: We started as an import company and then built our 850,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in 2007, which has been recently expanded. We’re entirely vertically integrated, designing and making all our products. We also expanded into the commercial and specification market and started calling on architects, designers and specifiers to get into the project business. In 2013, we launched the first All-LED decorative company called Modern Forms Lighting.
In 2014, we stopped making incandescent lighting products and became a source for All-LED fixtures. In 2016, we established our landscape lighting company and built it from the ground up (no pun intended). 2019 was a big year. We started in the custom integration channel with one of the major buying groups in 2019 and then launched a ceiling fan company, Modern Forms Smart Fans.
In 2020, we established AiSPIRE, designed exclusively for the integration channel and enhanced our position in the industry. In 2022, we purchased Schonbek Worldwide Lighting, the world’s oldest decorative crystal lighting company, located in upstate New York. They do stateside manufacturing, plating, and painting.
We also opened a new manufacturing facility in Thailand to complement our manufacturing facility in China, and we also opened our fourth regional distribution center in the U.S. outside of Dallas. Our headquarters are in Port Washington on Long Island, New York, and we ship out of warehousing, assembly, and distribution centers in New York, Georgia, Texas, and California. We also have an IOT center in Austin, Texas, and three elegant, state-of-the-art showrooms in the Dallas Trade Mart.
George: What are the main categories of LED lighting?
Patrick: There are four distinct types of LED lighting on the market today: constant white, Dim-to-Warm, tunable white, and color. The first is constant white, also known as static white — it doesn’t change color. When you dim it, it gets less intense, but the color remains the same. This can sometimes make a room feel gray or foggy. We use static white in places like the laundry room, where you might sort socks and other clothes. We don’t need mood and emotion in a laundry room. We also use it in the pantry where you’re looking for ingredients or in apparel closets when you need to distinguish a blue blazer from a black one. Constant white lighting is also installed in a garage, where we don’t need mood lighting to wash a car or grab a shovel. However, we don’t necessarily want bright white light in a bathroom in the middle of the night, or if we want to take a relaxing bath. We don’t do the same thing in every room, so why would we put the same light in every room in the house?
The next experience is Dim-to-Warm, which acts like a halogen or incandescent bulb. As you lower the voltage, it dims, decreasing intensity and changing color to a warm temperature. Most Dim-to-Warm fixtures in the market transition from 3000 Kelvin, the color of a halogen bulb at full brightness, to about 1800 Kelvin, the color of candlelight. We suggest using Dim-to-Warm anywhere you want mood and emotion. Think of living rooms where we want to sit and relax on the couch, read or watch TV, and media rooms… Dining rooms, where you can turn it up for bright paperwork and homework or turn it down for romantic or intimate dinners. It’s also great in bathrooms. Dim-to-Warm is intuitive because anyone who grew up with incandescent or halogen lighting understands how it should behave.
Then, we have Tunable Light, which allows scene creation. For instance, you wake in the morning and roll over and press a button on the keypad to activate the sunrise scene, and throughout a set time, the light transitions from warm candlelight all the way up to your preferred color temperature. At night, you hit the sunset button, so while you’re preparing for bed over 15 to 20 minutes, it goes from 3200 Kelvin down to 1800K, like a sunset, helping your body get ready for sleep. It’s also useful in great rooms, where you can tune light to enhance the look of your prized possessions, decorative glass, artwork and fine fabrics.
And the final experience is Color. Many people back away from color because they don’t want things to look garish, but color is essential in specific spaces.
High-end fitness centers are now using cobalt blue light because blue wavelengths tell our brains to suppress melatonin because we are wide awake, mimicking daylight. The same room can be tuned to a soft rose color for relaxing meditation or yoga. So, we might use color in the exercise room, the theater, or around the bar if the client wants a dramatic effect. Color is also crucial for outside lighting, which we’ll talk more about in a bit.
We encourage integrators to share these stories and give customers a frame of reference for where we use each type of light. It’s not about the price, size, or number of cans as lighting has become commoditized —it’s all about using the right light in the right room.
George: You mentioned AiSPIRE, which I think most of our readers will be especially interested in, as lighting and lighting control have become so much more of a focus for technology integrators.
Patrick: AiSPIRE was established in response to integrators who don’t want to compete with outlets that undervalue the price of materials supplied because they have not devoted time or effort in the project. WAC has been around for a long time and is a widely distributed brand. Integrators shared that while they respected the brand tremendously and its visibility, it presented a challenge as once they’ve invested in the layout, design and wiring diagrams of a project, they’d prefer not to be undercut. They preferred lines with limited distribution to protect their teams’ investments and efforts. We listened to them and said, “Okay, we’re going to create an integrator-only brand to meet your precise lighting needs.”
With AiSPIRE, we don’t sell through any internet sites. If an integrator puts something online through the integration channel, and sells it at the integrator retail price, that’s fine. But customers can’t go to a well-known e-commerce site, a supply house, or a showroom. AiSPIRE is only distributed through the custom integration channel, allowing integrators to maintain design integrity, pricing and profitability.
When an integrator partners with us, they gain access to both the WAC and AiSPIRE product lines. This gives them access to products not included in AiSPIRE, such as our landscape products, our new Colorscaping products, and any builder-grade products for budget-sensitive situations. In 2023, we added Modern Forms Smart Fans to the integration channel, allowing fans to be operated through their home control system without having an ugly plastic yolk on the wall. We’ve also included Modern Forms fans and Colorscaping on the AiSPIRE website for easy access to everything they need on one website.
George: That all sounds very integrator friendly.
Patrick: Yes, we’ve really tried to build the AiSPIRE line to meet the needs of custom integrators.
George: I noticed that the Colorscaping product line just won an award from the buying group HTSA. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Patrick: Absolutely. Colorscaping is a color-tunable and color-changing landscape lighting product. We looked at the market’s needs and existing solutions and saw an opportunity for improvement. That’s how we develop all of our products.
From a design standpoint, people are now taking as much care of the outside of their homes as they do on the inside. We sell tunable white for inside applications because it enhances finishes, fabrics, and other decor. So, we thought, why not offer a tunable white product that does the same thing outside? We developed Colorscaping, which uses tunable white and full-color spectrum technologies to create dramatic outdoor lighting effects.
With Colorscaping, you can make Japanese maples look more red. You can make evergreens appear more vibrant with cooler color temperatures. Colonial contemporary white homes can look cleaner with a cooler temperature, and log homes, wood homes, or brick homes can appear more inviting with a warmer temperature. You can easily adjust the tunable white to make it pop. And with a few adjustments, you can add vibrant color.
The other revolutionary aspect is that it uses power line communication (PLC). You run the same direct burial 12-2 wires as regular static white landscape lighting, but our smart transformer sends micro signals across the power. The fixtures have a smart receiver that interprets the messages, directing them to a specific white color temperature or shades and gradients of red, green or blue. There’s minimal DMX programming involved. You open up our app, and the fixtures appear. You name them, group them, and control them via a control system or the app. We even have smart wall controls. It’s exceptionally homeowner-friendly, and no other landscape system offers that level of control and ease of programming.
George: That’s very exciting. What are some of the other trends going on in lighting today?
Patrick: The most significant trend, and the easiest move for integrators not deeply involved in lighting, is to utilize Dim-to-Warm technology. That’s a considerable advantage and step up for homeowners who are used to getting builder- or contractor- grade, or entry-level products in their homes. Upgrading to a Dim-to-Warm product often means a better-architected product, which sits higher in the ceiling plane, reducing glare. And Dim-to-Warm offers the opportunity to create mood and emotion. It’s very intuitive and easy for integrators to implement, since it’s a phase-dim product. So, that has been the first significant step integrators have taken.
There’s also been a big educational process regarding DMX over the last two years. I think we and other manufacturers assumed that many integrators knew how to use DMX or were already doing it, which wasn’t always the case. So, we’ve been doing a lot more DMX training.
George: Can you give us a brief explanation of DMX?
Patrick: Sure. DMX technology is a digital signal sent from the control system through a gateway down to the fixture itself. Each fixture is assigned a number, which can be grouped. For example, in the bedroom, all four recessed cans may have one number if we want them to operate in the same way. However, in the living room, we might assign each fixture a unique number, allowing them to act as a group or individually.
DMX sends out signals incredibly fast — 44 times a second. Fixtures passively await signals until their number is called. So, we can send a signal to turn on 1, 3, 5 and 7. Or, turn on 8, 9, 10, 11. Or, 1 through 12. This allows us to create scenes in a great room where the reading chair is lit by itself, or the reading chair and fireplace are lit together, or the entire room is illuminated, with artwork brighter and the couch dimmed for TV viewing, while the reading chair remains lit. DMX allows us to send signals quickly, address fixtures individually, and do a lot simultaneously. Now that integrators are comfortable with DMX, they realize they can create transition scenes, set color temperatures, and enable sunrise and sunset effects and circadian rhythm, all through tunable light with digital signals. They’re also learning that it isn’t about switching to a more expensive lighting product in lighting but instead shifting dollars from the controls package to the lighting package. For example, an integrator calculated a savings of $12,000 in dimming modules on a recent medium-sized house project by switching to DMX. You only need one gateway per 32 fixtures versus one dimming module per four fixtures in a bedroom or six fixtures in a kitchen. It’s a transition of dollars. That’s why many control system companies have gotten into lighting as well. Dimming module revenue is declining as dimming can now be done internally in the fixture, shifting that revenue to a higher- quality lighting product.
George: What is the future for AiSPIRE and WAC Lighting?
Patrick: Very bright and finely tuned. Lighting brings integrators into projects earlier and helps position themselves as the total technology experts. We work hard to keep our brands at the forefront of connected integration lighting and control technology with cutting-edge, forward-thinking design and engineering. Everything is manufactured and tested to the highest quality standards as integrators and technologists realize the importance of high-quality, personalized lighting. It’s transforming our homes and providing the best experiences to elevate your space and improve the quality of clients’ lives. And now, science supports that better lighting can lead to better sleep, which in turn leads to better living. The balance of natural and artificial light will be at the forefront of future lighting and space design, and we’re moving fast to develop technology to support our integration partners.
George McClure is a Senior Editor for Technology Designer Magazine and the Technology Insider Group. Previously, he was the General Manager of Fidelity Communications and most recently a Marketing Manager for Denver-based ListenUp.
