5 Things to Know: June 6

SCI Lighting Solutions hosted its biennial Westward Glow gathering at Twenty Eight Restaurant & Bar in Orange County, California, drawing hundreds of lighting people from across Southern California, including two busloads from San Diego.

Dozens of manufacturers were on hand, and the format did what the best agency events do: put specifiers, distributors, contractors, and developers in the same room with product and people, without the pressure of a formal sales call. Conversations happened naturally, which is usually when the best ones do.

Above (L to R): SCI President Scott Anderson, SCI CEO & Founder Tom Thomson, and Inside Lighting’s Al Uszynski

The ranch-chic production was committed. Guests enjoyed smoked specialties, campfire-inspired cocktails, and live Americana music, but the signature moment was the custom hat bar, a build-your-own cowboy hat experience where attendees selected style, finish, and trim on the spot. The lighting industry parallel was not lost on anyone: made to order, performance specs upfront, short lead times.

The 5-hour event flew by, and after a decadent night of camaraderie and lighting conversations, hundreds of lighting people grabbed their custom brims, tipped them to the hosts, and galloped right onto a surprisingly wide-open 405.

NeoCon opens Monday in Chicago, and for the first time, the contract furniture and interior design world's largest annual gathering will include Illuminate, a dedicated lighting section described as a show-within-a-show at The Mart.

The debut brings together architectural, technical, and decorative lighting brands in a curated format designed to give lighting a more prominent and permanent presence at an event where it has historically played a supporting role. While lighting brands have long participated at NeoCon, this year more than 60 will be on hand, a scale that signals something has shifted.

Industry buzz ahead of the opening has been notably positive. Illuminate will feature immersive installations, emerging and established brands, and a session Monday afternoon on the main stage titled “Lighting that Shapes Design,” with a panel of lighting designers, specifiers, and interior designers exploring what it means to treat light as the fourth visual element of the built environment rather than a finishing detail added after the real decisions have been made.

We will be there covering the show and moderating that Monday session, and we will have full coverage in the days ahead.

A small but well-armed company from Renton, Washington has taken one of the industry's more recognizable names to federal court. Aleddra Inc. filed suit against RAB Lighting on June 5 in the Northern District of Texas, alleging that RAB's emergency LED tube lamps infringe five Aleddra patents covering battery backup power management, self-testing capability, and related solid-state lighting technology.

The accused products include RAB's T10EM series and its BT01 emergency tube.

Above: Excerpt from Aleddra vs. RAB Lighting complaint

The complaint's timeline is detailed: Aleddra says it notified RAB's CEO Ross Barna in February 2023, provided claim charts two months later, and was told that RAB would not take a license. A second round of notices in 2024 produced the same response.

Aleddra cites that sequence as the basis for its willful infringement claim, which opens the door to treble damages. RAB, one of the larger and more established players in the commercial lighting market, has not yet responded publicly, and its decision to decline licensing suggests the company believes it has solid ground to stand on.

The San Francisco Standard recently profiled the city's luxury home lighting market, where $250,000 electrical budgets and $225-an-hour bulb whisperers are increasingly standard line items in seven-figure renovations.

The piece centers on designer Marissa Tucci, who spends six to eight hours after dark fine-tuning every fixture in a finished home, dialing in beam angles, color temperatures, and brightness levels down to the decimal point before a client moves in.

The story touches on territory familiar to lighting people: circadian lighting, wellness-driven design, Lutron integration, and the growing appetite among high-end clients for lighting control systems sophisticated enough to require their own specialists for troubleshooting.

Also featured are Gantri, a SoMa-based 3D-printed fixture company using biodegradable materials, and Doma, which is layering AI and radar sensing into new residential developments to create lighting systems that anticipate occupancy before anyone flips a switch.

What the piece captures well is the distance the conversation has traveled. Clients who ten years ago had no opinion on color temperature are now arriving at design meetings with views on circadian rhythms and scene programming. The market is moving, and San Francisco, as usual, is moving faster than most.

The New York Times’ Wirecutter recently took on one of domestic life's more persistent arguments: whether turning off the lights when you leave a room still matters.

Their answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that it barely matters anymore. A Wirecutter columnist walked readers through the math on LED energy consumption, concluded the savings are negligible, and suggested smart bulbs, motion sensors, and scheduled lighting as a path around the whole argument.

We enjoy when mainstream outlets take on lighting topics, if only because it shows how far the conversation has traveled. The comments section, predictably, was less convinced, with readers invoking climate change, Jevons Paradox, and at least one reference to throwing trash from a car window.