The Evolution of Lighting at Junair

Background

Ever since Junair was founded, our customers have always needed us for more than just spray booth equipment.  Whilst it was a huge part of our offering, we would often be called upon to help body shop owners with the entire design and fit-out of their workshop, from painting the floor right through to fitting lighting, dust extraction systems and more.

In the beginning we would work with off-the-shelf solutions and bring them together in a workshop design, but over time we could see the limitations of certain products and wanted to provide a solution that was bespoke to the needs of the body shop industry.

This was particularly true of body shop and spray booth lighting.

Some 30 years ago, Junair used the traditional metal halide lamps within spray booths and body shops. But since lighting is such a critical part of the paint process, both inside the booth and outside, Junair started to look more in-depth into lighting options in general, starting with the quantity of lights within a room.

Jason Douglas, sales director of Junair said; “if you needed to supply an output of 500 lux over a building, a typical architect’s approach might be to place a light every 6 metres, without much regard to where exactly the light would be cast. In our experience, we knew this would create shadows in places that would make it difficult for painters, so our installations were typically positioned to account for this. “

Our focus on how the lighting was used has always been the most critical factor driving the evolution of our lighting solutions.

Driving the need for energy efficient lighting

Over the years, Junair started to see a slight problem in this approach. Whilst using a higher quantity of lights was providing a better workspace for body shops, it was leaving customers with higher energy bills to pay. Something that we proactively decided to investigate and find a solution for.

12-14 years ago, we believed that the future of lighting lay with PLL fluorescent lighting. We started to use this in earnest and aimed to rectify both the energy cost issue and provide a better, more linear set up with a lower quantity of lights required.

However, as we now know, a few years later, LEDs started to emerge into the marketplace and PLL was to become obsolete.

The future of lighting

As a business, Junair has always actively kept up to date with technological developments and in the case of LEDs this was no different.

Jason continues; “It was clear that LEDs were the future of lighting systems due to their efficiency and so at that point we started to work with a British designer to develop an LED light that was suitable to use in a spray booth and the workshop.

We still had the vision to provide energy savings but also to create the perfect light for the paint process.”

The development process

Junair started to develop their thinking around the right lux levels and colour temperature and, using LEDs, were able to finely tune and produce something that was going to be optimal for the end user.

Jason explains; “The great thing about LEDs is that we can tune them depending on the environment. Standard fit for lighting is at 5m in height, but if a customer only had 3.5m height to work with, we would be able to tune the LEDs to suit them.”

Junair’s original LED lighting was on a dot matrix board as standard and in 2019 we decided to refresh the design and try and create the full, linear design. We went back to the drawing board, and with new technology that was now available in LEDs, we were able to find a much better solution.

The outcome

This solution is available today as SiriusLED, a product which has a pure light output and offers fantastic energy savings beyond any of our original lighting products and in fact many LED lighting products on the market.

Once again, Junair’s approach to product development is always with the process and end user in mind and so the design of SiriusLED offers specific benefits to body shop owners.

Sirius LED benefits

• Its linear design allows for imperfections in the paint to be seen a lot easier
• Its consistent output and daylight equivalent colour temperature make colour matching easier and improves the final finish
• It is customisable to suit the environment which means more body shop owners can enjoy the benefits of this new product
• It offers a wide angle of view which eliminates shadows and improves overall visibility in the workshop

Overall, it is THE perfect solution for task lighting for quality driven work.

Want to know more?

SiriusLED is available for use inside workshops exclusively from Junair.

It is a solution that has been custom designed for a specific process and to satisfy a specific need. It is shadow free, the perfect colour temperature and the correct lux level – making it unique in the market.

At Junair, we love solving problems and our hands on experience and knowledge of the automotive repair process allows us to fully understand our customers’ needs and provide the absolute best solution for them.

If you would like to speak to a member of our team about the challenges you face in your body shop and see how we may be able to help you, please call us on 01706 363555.

Written by