Abbey Dental – Good lighting makes a visit to the dentist better
Proper lighting in healthcare facilities plays a critical role to create an environment that helps patients feel at ease and clinicians work accurately; especially at a dentist.
Electrical contractors Penkhull turned to Collingwood to provide the right lighting scheme for Abbey Dental Practice in Staffordshire. It is a large practice with five surgeries, a reception area, toilets, offices and a staff room.
Says Greg Smith, managing director at Penkhull, “It’s quite a challenge making a dentist’s a welcoming space, but it is vital to help the patient relax prior to their treatment. Equally we have to ensure that the dentist and other clinicians can clearly and accurately see small details inside a patient’s mouth.”
Smart lighting and energy saving
Penkhull worked with Collingwood to integrate its lighting into a smart lighting system that allows staff to set different scenarios and control the timing and dimming of external and interior lights to help save energy.
Says Greg: “The design and technical assistance that we had from Collingwood helped us to provide an ideal solution for this job. The lighting is vital to create the right feel for the practice from outside the building and then throughout the patient’s visit.”
Welcoming reception area
Outside there are four downlights angled to highlight the building and encourage people inside. Once inside the reception area, contractors used both spot and strip lights to give a warm relaxing light with a colour temperature of 3000K. Additional lighting also highlights the awards that the practice has won to help the patient relax and be confident that they are in good hands.
This design continues through the corridor towards the surgeries with both strip lighting and spotlights on the ceiling and step lighting at floor level to visually guide the patient along the passage. Again, the light is set at a warmer more relaxing colour temperature of 3000K.
Clear Task Lighting
Once inside the surgery, the challenge was to provide the right light for the dentist to complete detailed and accurate work.
Using Collingwood’s 1901 spotlights, Penkhull accurately focused the light where the dentist needs it. The light has a cool white colour temperature for greater visibility and provides true colour appearance with a CRI (colour rendering index) of 90, both vital for close up clinical work.
The spotlights also have a low glare rating for patient comfort.
In addition, the surgery features LED strip lighting from Collingwood to provide additional accent lighting, again this is set to a colour temperature of 4000K in the treatment rooms.
Concludes Greg: “Lighting has to perform many functions in a clinical setting such as a dentist. It needs to provide the right atmosphere to help the patient relax, but also the right type of light where it is needed to enable the clinician to complete their task accurately. Collingwood helped us achieve this at Abbey Dental with both their technical help on design, integrating it within the smart control system and with the quality of the products that they provided.”
Products used at Abbey Dental:
1901 Downlight
LSV02 LED strip light
WL050 step light
