Australias first H&M store is on trend with LED lighting

When H&M arrived on Australia’s shores last year, it did so in style with a vast, mostly LED-lit flagship store in the former General Post Office building in Melbourne. The building’s long history, and its 18 meter high ceiling, presented the facility team with a challenge of respecting its heritage while ensuring that the fixtures were as easy to maintain as possible. This has been achieved mainly with linear LED luminaires, recessed from existing ceiling pockets, which focus the light down the central spine of the building’s three-storey glazed atrium. Lighting designers kept in close contact with Heritage Victoria throughout the project and ensured that the lighting installation was fully reversible and didn’t do any damage to the building surface. As well as recessed ceiling fixtures, linear LED luminaires have been placed high up to uplight the ceiling and emphasise the columns and the geometric shape of the atrium. Lower down, mannequins sitting on swings and posing on podiums are lit with narrow-beam metal halide spotlights. The spotlights are placed in pairs on the columns around the atrium with linear LED uplights positioned in-between the spotlights to highlight the top part of the columns above. The arcade arches around the building are lit with linear LED fixtures concealed within the structure. All light sources are warm white with a colour temperature of 3000k. Using mainly LED light sources means the store has achieved an electrical load of 12W/m2 for the downward light and 10W/m2 for the architectural lighting to the arches, trees and ceiling structure. Novel Energy Lighting supplies LED lamps, fittings, and controls for many retail applications. Contact us for volume quotes or for lighting designs: www.novelenergylighting.com, or Tel: 02085408287