Philips Day-Brite Lighting SofTrace Luminaires Deliver Optimum Performance

GoodMart now offers an architectural luminaire with efficiency levels exceeding 95% and lumens per watt as great as 87. The SofTrace by Day-Brite Lighting is a fresh streamlined design that represents a huge step forward for the lighting industry. The universal appeal with clean crisp detailing and textural highlights brings soft illumination across the face of the luminaire. The benefits that our customers realize are a productive environment without visual distraction that can often disturb the comfort and continuity of the space.

The SofTrace 2x2 direct indirect light fixture.

The enclosure center section options include diffuse ribbed acrylic, diffuse smooth acrylic, perforated metal, and radial louver. Any of these options allow excellent distribution of light on the workplane to allow greater luminaire spacing and the use of fewer fixtures.

Call GoodMart to see a variety of  direct/indirect lighting options, including the SofTrace. Full assistance for your office layout is available as well as attractive quantity pricing that fits your budget. Call us at 877-402-6100.

Electrical Supplies for Electricians & Contractors

If you're looking for a great on-line source for electrical supplies, GoodMart has an ever expanding line of products from leading manufacturers such as Hubbell, Bryant, Raco, Littelfuse, Ferraz-Shawmut, Ideal, Extech, Leviton, Lutron and more.



Sometimes it's those hard to find items that make buying from the big box home centers all too inconvenient for the contractor or electrician. The fact is that they just don't carry those odd items in stock. GoodMart has a large selection of colors, sizes, voltages and specifications that you won't find at a home center.

Shop for electrical boxes, fuses, electrical tape, heat shrink tubing, cable ties, wire nuts, insulated connectors, dimmers, sockets, wallplates, receptacles, extension cords and thousands of other everyday electrical products and hard to locate products. Plus, you can call us for quantity pricing since we understand your bottom line.

Don't forget to look over our selection of tools and test instruments that will make your job easier and safer.

Philips LED Lights Up Retail

More and more we see LED bulbs in retail settings for applications where recessed fixtures, display cases and track lighting have adopted this energy saving replacement.

Contractors Rely on Electrical Tools, Test Meters and the Trusty Flashlight

GoodMart’s large selection of tools and test instruments have been quite popular with contractors of all types looking for some of those hard-to-find items.

EX430 professional grade True RMS Multimeter

For electricians hand-held meters are a must on the job, everyday. GoodMart has digital multimeters from Extech, Amprobe and Ideal that run the full range with all the essential features you need. Voltage testers, GFCI testers, clamp meters and circuit tracers can provide fast and convenient troubleshooting in the field. Electrical tools such as cable cutters, wire strippers, fish tapes and conduit benders are must haves for every electrician.
HVAC equipment maintains acceptable temperature, humidity and ventilation levels for occupant health and comfort, and, now more than ever, to help regulate building health and manage energy costs. The right tools make this possible such as anemometers, manometers, IR thermometers, combustion analyzers and gas detectors.
For general contractors, GoodMart can equip you with construction calculators such as the Sonin DT110 InchMate Plus and measuring tools like the Laser Target Range Finder. Don’t forget your flashlight! We have the top models from Rayovac. LED flashlights are used everywhere and have more features than ever before. NIGHTSTICK LED task lights from Bayco have flashlight and floodlight functionality with impact resistance. Best of all they’re rechargeable!


And if you need something to put all those tools and test instruments in, we have tool boxes, tool chests and rugged protective cases.

Broadway Theater Interior LED Lighting

I was thrilled to see how the Philips Color Kinetics LED eW Cove QLX Powercore products were put to use at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway. The eW Cove fixtures were placed behind decorative stained glass column capitals and inside the accompanying stained glass light fixtures pictured below. The warm white 2700 Kelvin color temperature LED light source mimics the appearance of incandescent light, yet will use a fraction of the energy of incandescent bulbs, and require no maintenance for a very, very long time to come. Best of all, the theater's advanced stage dimming system integrated perfectly with these LEDs, and they dim in a perfect linear manner. Bravo Belasco Theatre!

LED Fixtures Provide General Office Lighting

LED light fixtures for general office lighting are viable, and they include some advanced features including control via handheld remote or wallbox unit, dimming, color temperature changing, networking and more. Dimming the fixtures down all the way and selecting the warmest 2700 Kelvin color temperature allows the creation of an ambiance suitable for fine dining, while increasing light levels and shifting the color temperature to a cooler setting, (up to 6300 Kelvin if desired), makes the lighting suitable for general office use. Below is a photo of 1 x 4 cable-mounted LED light fixtures from GO Lighting.

GO Lighting FLL LED fixture as cable mount.

GoodMart Lighting Lab Offers Hands-On Learning

The GoodMart Lighting Lab is open by appointment, and is a resource available to the lighting community and the general public for learning about lighting technology, including how dimming works, light bulb and ballast efficacy, color temperature, average rated life, light fixture efficiency and more. We are typically able to set up custom displays to help visitors choose the best lighting system for any commercial, industrial or residential project. Our library of light fixture catalogs and lighting layout assistance service turn a visit to the GoodMart Lighting Lab into a single stop for all your lighting specification and design needs. Contact us to schedule an appointment.

Visit the GoodMart Lighting Lab

Philips LED Flood Replaces Halogen Outdoor Fixture

 A prominent New York City private school replaced its 150W halogen exterior light fixtures, pictured at left, with new 50W Philips Color Kinetics eW Blast Powercore flood light fixtures, shown at right. The school got a dramatic increase in light, with 100W of energy savings, as well as terrific maintenance cost savings.

Philips LED Outdoor Fixture is the right choice.

Why Less Light is Sometimes More

Occasionally we see a product application that is just, well, perfect. Take, for example, the unfortunate installation of 52 CRI warm white 40W circline fluorescent fixtures in the common area halls of a large multi-family apartment complex in New York City. Residents there hated the quality of the light emitted by the light fixtures, but there was not enough money available in the budget to replace them.  We pointed out that we could correct the ghastly color rendering, and also cut the energy consumption by more than 50% with the installation of two GU24 9W 4,100 Kelvin CFLs in place of the existing circline bulb and ballast. The customer was skeptical, because the initial lumens for existing vs. new would drop from 2,800 to a measly 1,200. As we suspected. the mockup proved that their concerns were unfounded, and the hallways are now perfectly illuminated. 

Despite the fact that a light meter will measure a drop in footcandles in the halls, the space actually appears to be brighter than it was. Much of this is due to the superior color rendering of the new light bulbs, but the rest of the effect is due to the way the human eye perceives light, especially in low-light interior applications such as this.

Here is a photo:

A marked improvement.

The reason this worked so well, despite what the lumen data would presuppose, is explained best in Dr. Sam Berman's excellent study, The Reengineering of Lighting Photometry. In a nutshell, the higher the color temperature of a light source, the brighter it will appear to the eye. To arrive at the "perceived lumens", (scotopic lumens as registered by the rods in the eyes), the factor we apply is called the S/P ratio, and the specific values are identified in Dr. Berman's study. 

An additional benefit to the apartment complex, besides excellent energy savings and better-looking hallways, is vastly lower maintenance costs because the ballast is now integral to the low-cost GU24 light bulb.

LED Elevator Bulbs Case Study

Many elevators in service today use either MR16, GBF or 1383 halogen light bulbs. The light bulbs in the elevator cabs are typically operating 24/7, so they are an ideal retrofit candidate. We were delighted to see how well the new 2W LED GBF elevator bulbs from TCP worked, to replace 20W halogen GBF light bulbs. 

Here is the math supporting the economic viability of the retrofit. Halogen VS LED energy savings per bulb is 18W. 18W X 8,760 hours per year = 157,680 Watt-Hours. Divide by 1,000 to get 157.7 kWh. In NYC, average energy rates are about $0.18 per kWh, so the annual energy cost savings of each light bulb is $28.39. Considering the LED GBF light bulbs cost $30.00, we can be assured of a one year simple payback. If we add in maintenance and materials cost savings, the math gets even better. Each halogen GBF costs about $10 and has an average rated life of 2,000 hours. The LED GBF has a three year manufacturer's warranty, which equates to 26,280 hours of warrantied service life. Over this period, materials costs for replacement halogen GBF light bulbs would run over $130, (13 GBF bulbs x $10 per bulb). So the total economic benefit of the three year warrantied life of the LED is over $185, or over $61 per light bulb per year. 

The elevator cab pictured below has six light bulbs, so the owner of this property has just increased his net cash flow by $366 annually. Assuming the property is valued at a modest 10 percent capitalization rate, the value of the property increased by $3,660 per elevator cab. 

Of course, none of this matters if the elevator's lighting is no longer acceptable. Happily, that is not the case. The lighting looks great, and a major heat source uncomfortably close to the heads of elevator users has been permanently removed.

Here are the before and after photos -

The result.