By Alistair Brown, CEO of LumenStream
Last updated: 31 July 2026
Quite possibly, yes.
Most first-generation industrial LED fittings were rated to around 50,000 hours. A two-shift factory running 16 hours a day, six days a week puts roughly 5,000 hours a year on its lights, so a system installed around 2016 is arriving at the end of its rated life about now.
This article covers how to tell whether your lighting has started holding back output, what it does to accident risk, what a re-upgrade would save, and how to fund one without touching the capital budget. It is written for the operations and finance people who own that decision.
Why would a manufacturer replace LEDs installed ten years ago?
Because the best fittings available in 2016 are now well behind what would replace them, on lifetime and on output alike.
Early commercial LED fittings were rated to around 50,000 hours. Quality fittings today reach 70,000 to 100,000 hours, deliver more light for every watt they draw, and ship with controls (occupancy sensors and daylight dimming) that first-generation systems never had.
| First-generation (~2016) | Current generation | |
|---|---|---|
| Rated life | Around 50,000 hours | 70,000 to 100,000 hours |
| Light per watt | Lower output per watt drawn | Higher output per watt drawn |
| Controls | None | Occupancy sensors and daylight dimming |
LEDs also fade long before they fail.
The industry calls the end-of-life line L70: the point where a fitting has dropped to 70% of its original brightness. A ten-year-old system can pass a walk-round while quietly sitting below the light level it was designed to deliver. We explain how that gradual fade works in We already have LEDs. Why would we upgrade again?
And many "fully LED" factories are not fully LED.
Walk the plant rooms, the stores and the offices above the shop floor and you will often find legacy fluorescent tubes still running. Those tubes are being phased out: the mercury exemptions that kept most T5 and T8 tubes on sale were revoked, with UK enforcement from 1 February 2024. Like-for-like replacements are getting scarcer and dearer every year.
How do I tell if factory lighting is holding back output?
The signs show up in the work before they show up on the fittings: rising inspection errors, eye-strain complaints from the line, and tasks that take longer in the dimmer corners of the hall than they did five years ago.
The fade is gradual, so people adapt to it.
A supervisor will not report that the hall has slowly lost brightness. They will report rework, missed defects at quality control, and operators leaning closer to the work than they used to. By the time visibility is a standing complaint, the system is usually years past its best.
A handheld lux meter settles it in minutes.
Manufacturing lighting designs are built to BS EN 12464-1, the standard for indoor workplace lighting. That standard sets general manufacturing tasks at around 300 lux, with much higher levels for fine inspection work. HSE's guidance works on the same principle: the more detailed the task, the more light it needs, from 300 lux in a process control room to 750 lux for studying an engineering drawing. If your readings sit below the level each area was designed for, the lighting is costing you output as well as energy.
Three checks will tell you where you stand this week:
- Take lux readings in your most detail-heavy work areas and compare them against the 300 lux general manufacturing level, or against your original lighting design if you still have it.
- Pull the last twelve months of maintenance calls and count the lighting-related ones. A rising count usually means drivers reaching end of life across the installation, not a run of bad luck.
- Ask your maintenance team how they replace failed fluorescent tubes in the parts of the site that never went LED. If the answer involves stockpiling or substitutes, the phase-out is already costing you.
To understand the figures on a fitting's data sheet before you speak to any supplier, see What facilities managers need to know about lighting.
Does old lighting increase accident risk in a factory?
Yes. HSE's lighting guidance (HSG38, Lighting at Work) treats light levels as a safety control, and three of its mechanisms matter most on a production site:
- Visibility around vehicle routes. HSE's workplace transport guidance deals directly with how well pedestrians can be seen where forklifts and delivery vehicles operate. A faded system makes people harder to see exactly where the consequences are worst.
- Shadows. Lighting is usually designed while the building is empty, before racking, machinery and parked trailers cast the shadows people actually work in. HSE recommends specific lighting for pedestrian walkways in those areas.
- Sudden contrast. The eye takes several seconds to adapt between a bright hall and a dark loading bay, and hazards get missed in those seconds.
A system that has faded below its design level weakens all three controls at once, together with visibility in an emergency. A re-lit factory is cheaper to run and easier to move around safely, and the same survey delivers both.
What would a re-upgrade save a manufacturer?
At the UK average non-domestic electricity rate of 24.14p per kWh (DESNZ, Q1 2026), every megawatt-hour of lighting energy a re-upgrade removes is worth roughly £240 a year, before you count reduced maintenance.
For example, at Alexander Dennis, one of our UK customers and the UK's largest bus manufacturer, we replaced 465 fittings across the AD24 aftermarket site in Anston with new LEDs and daylight-harvesting photocells. The new system saves 90 MWh and 60 tonnes of CO2 a year, a 61% increase in energy efficiency. At the current average rate that is roughly £21,700 a year off the electricity bill.
Laura Courtney, Head of Engineering Finance at Alexander Dennis, put it this way:
"The project has significantly improved the lighting on site, not only in our workshop and paint booth areas, but in our offices as well. And best of all, there is no large deposit, only monthly payments over a five-year period."
The honest caveat: a re-upgrade does not pay off everywhere.
If your fittings went in within the last three years, or your site runs a single short shift, the savings will rarely justify the work yet. Check your lux readings once a year and revisit when the measurements or the maintenance bills change. Long operating hours and visible fade are what make a re-upgrade pay.
How do we fund it without raiding the capital budget?
Lighting as a Service was built for exactly this position: we survey, design, fund, install and maintain the new system. You pay one fixed monthly fee out of the savings, with no upfront cost and zero indexation for the full term. Even where the energy saving is modest, the service route keeps your capital free for the upgrades that compete with lighting for budget. Whether that fee sits on your balance sheet depends on how the agreement is structured, so ask your accountant to look at the contract itself. The full mechanics, including what happens at the end of the term, are in What is Lighting as a Service?
