Accent lighting is essential when the conceptual focus is on room ambiance and people's well-being. This lighting strategy is about specifying important areas that can then be focused by using a narrow distribution of light.
Luminaires that produce the focused light are often called spotlights. To ensure that we can quickly and easily find a product with a specific beam angle, it is important that manufacturers always tell us the corresponding light distribution. This is very often done by using terms such as: Super Spot, Spot, Medium Flood, Flood, Wide Flood, etc.
But what exactly do these individual terms stand for? We have noted that the beam angles of the luminaires within a designation can be widely different. At the time of our research, the beam angle for luminaires with the designation "Spot" was between 12° and 19.8°. For luminaires with the designation "Medium Flood", the deviations were even up to more than 10°. This makes our product selection much more difficult and time consuming when we are looking for a luminaire with a very specific beam angle.
The following table provides an insight into our research and makes it clear: The designation "Spot", "Flood", "Wide Flood" alone says nothing about the beam angle! The number of degrees is decisive!
If the beam angle is only described verbally, a look at the cone diagram will help. Here, the beam angle is always specified. If the luminaire data sheet does not have a cone diagram, the luminaire file can also be imported into the LDT Editor or DIALux. Here, the cone diagram can be viewed in each case.
If you have any experience on this subject, please share it with us. And in the future, be sure to ask manufacturers to specify the beam angle more clearly.