The corporate headquarters of OfficeMax Australia, in Richmond, Victoria, is a busy office with various large open plan spaces that house sales, finance, marketing and logistic support and account departments. The office is stationed in an old brick factory building, and has character to boot. One of the challenges buildings of this vintage face is adequately lighting areas that haven’t been designed with a modern utility in mind.John Karafillis and the management decided to overhaul and modernise the premises, with a desire to create an environment that was bright and confortable, making the space a pleasant and productive place to be for employees, as well as showcasing a modern and progressive look to clients and corporate partners.LEDified’s commercial lighting specialist conducted an audit of the premises, utilizing cutting edge computer software to determine optimum lumen output and light spread throughout the diverse space. The largest open plan area is occupied by sales, customer care and account management. The beautiful space that features a classic high glass ceiling was obscured by old fashioned tubes, which were erected across the length of the room, 3 meters above the employee work stations. The space felt unnecessarily cramped, and light spread was uneven, leaving some spots on the office floor dim, while leaving other areas bright.
As a solution, the lighting designers, in collaboration with Niesha Johnson from Red Socks design, recommended dismantling the tubes, and erecting LEDified HighBays with coloured reflectors in their place. LEDified customised the colours to match the rest of the office’s colour scheme and logo. The results have been fantastic. There is now a spacious feeling in the room, natural light can now enter the building, unobscured by the previous lighting configuration. The spread of light is directional and even throughout the work space. LEDified retrofitted the other spaces, similarly improving the aesthetic of the newly refurbished site. Like many of our customers, of the major reasons for their switch over to LEDs was economic, The business now saves $16,254 per year on lighting costs and $29,675 over the course of 10 years in maintenance costs. In addition, OfficeMax paid for the investment with LEDified’s unique On Bill Funding scheme, allowing them to pay for the lights with their new energy savings. What OfficeMax had not expected was for the building to look as amazing as it did after the LEDified upgrade. The cost savings almost seemed incidental!
