laadmin, Author at Los Angeles Lighting Mfg. Co.

The Benefits of Custom Lighting Fixtures

The Benefits of Custom Lighting Fixtures: Turning Challenges into Solutions

Why Custom Lighting is the Future of Our Industry

In a lighting market dominated by mass-produced, imported fixtures, innovation and flexibility have become rare commodities. Most lighting manufacturers today import standardized fixtures by the container, flooding the market with low-cost, low-flexibility products that leave specifiers, distributors, and end users without real solutions when a project demands something unique.

That’s where LA Lighting stands apart.

Proudly U.S.-based and fully operational in El Monte, California, LA Lighting performs every function of a true lighting manufacturer right here in the USA: from design, engineering, and fabrication to assembly and testing. We’ve been “Solving the Industry’s Challenges Since 1988”, and our mission is simple: “Your Lighting Challenge is Our Lighting Solution.”

What Makes LA Lighting Different

Unlike 95% of competitors who rely on offshore manufacturing and rigid, container-based product lines, LA Lighting builds custom lighting fixtures to order, with no minimum quantities required. Whether you need one fixture or one thousand, we can create the solution.

Using cold rolled steel or aluminum, our team forms and fabricates components through CNC machining, laser cutting, and press brakes, giving us total control over the design, performance, and quality of every luminaire we build.

The result is not just a fixture; it’s a solution engineered specifically for your project.

Introducing the LCD Program: LA Lighting Custom Design

Our LCD Program (LA Lighting Custom Design) is the cornerstone of our custom manufacturing capability. When you bring us a lighting challenge, our engineers work with you to develop a unique fixture design that meets your specifications — whether that means a new size, shape, optical configuration, mounting method, or control system.

Each custom fixture we build receives its own part number and full documentation. In most cases, that part number remains exclusive to the rep, distributor, or end user who funded the design. We will not offer it to others without their consent or compensation.
Even better, there are no minimum order quantities (MOQs). You can order a single fixture if that’s what your project requires. While engineering fees apply depending on design complexity, these costs are transparent, one-time, and protect your design as a unique product offering.

Custom Retrofit vs. New Fixture

Not every lighting challenge requires a brand-new fixture. For many facilities looking to upgrade to LED, a custom retrofit can be a smarter, faster, and more cost-effective solution, especially when existing fixtures are unique or architecturally integrated into the space.
At LA Lighting, we specialize in designing and manufacturing custom UL Listed LED retrofit kits that modernize any existing fixture, whether it’s fluorescent, HID, or another legacy technology, with the performance and longevity of today’s best LED systems.
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all, imported retrofit kit. Each retrofit is custom-engineered to your specific fixture, built as if it had been designed that way from the factory. Every component is designed, fabricated, and assembled in our El Monte, California facility for precise fit, performance, and compliance.
Custom retrofits are ideal for fixtures that were specialty-built 10 to 20 years ago, where replacement with a standard LED fixture would be difficult, costly, or architecturally disruptive. While many in the industry will tell you to “just buy new,” that can often mean unnecessary demolition, expensive reinstallation, and extended downtime.
Our approach is different. LA Lighting can replicate and replace the internal components of your existing fixture, designing a retrofit kit that installs seamlessly into the existing housing. You’ll gain all the advantages of a fixture-based LED system all without the excessive material and labor costs of full replacement:

Long life and high efficacy
Five-year warranty
Full UL Listing and compliance

In most cases, our custom retrofit kits cost only one-half to one-third the price of a new fixture, while preserving the look, function, and integrity of the original installation.

If you have a legacy fixture in need of an LED upgrade, reach out to your LA Lighting representative to learn how to start the design process for your custom LED retrofit kit today.

For our Sales Agents: Sell Solutions, Not Just Fixtures

To our 50+ sales agencies across the U.S., the LCD Program is more than a feature, it’s a strategy.

Agents who embrace custom design sell more, win more specifications, and build stronger long-term relationships. By offering tailored solutions rather than standard catalog SKUs, they move beyond the race to the bottom on pricing.

Every project that needs a modification, a new size, or a special mounting condition is an opportunity to secure the spec and create customer loyalty. When you solve a mission-critical problem that others can’t, you’re not just a vendor; you become an indispensable partner.

The most successful LA Lighting reps are those who lean into customization. They use it to open doors, build trust, and grow their territories year after year.

For Specifiers and Designers: Freedom to Create

Lighting designers, engineers, and architects often face the same frustration: a great design idea that can’t be realized with off-the-shelf fixtures. With LA Lighting, you don’t have to compromise your vision.

Our engineering team thrives on collaboration. We invite specifiers to bring us their concepts, sketches, or even field challenges, and we’ll translate them into manufacturable, code-compliant solutions. Every detail — from photometric performance to form factor — can be fine-tuned to meet your design intent. Every fixture fully UL Certified, not just compliant.

For End Users: A True Manufacturing Partner

If you’re an end user, you’ve likely experienced the common dead-end of trying to get a custom fixture from a traditional lighting brand. You’re met with gatekeeping, lack of support, or after months of chasing your tail, the dreaded, “Sorry, can’t do it.”

At LA Lighting, that experience is flipped on its head.

We welcome end users and facility owners to visit our El Monte facility. Take a tour of the factory floor, meet our engineers, and see firsthand how your fixture is made. We operate with an open-door policy, inviting all members of the supply chain – agents, distributors, specifiers, architects, and end users – to collaborate directly with our team.

Our process is hands-on, transparent, and fast. You’ll be working directly with the people who design and build your solution, not an intermediary or offshore supplier.

Why So Many Choose the LCD Program

Our LCD Program has become one of the most popular services we offer. Over 80% of the fixtures LA Lighting builds are from this LCD line. This is because it empowers our partners and customers to do what no import brand can:

Deliver custom-engineered lighting that perfectly fits each project’s needs.
Protect proprietary designs with exclusive part numbers.
Eliminate MOQs and the waste associated with large, inflexible orders.
Collaborate directly with a U.S.-based engineering and manufacturing team.
Differentiate themselves in a crowded, price-driven market.

Join Us, Let’s Build Something Brilliant

For more than three decades, LA Lighting has been designing and manufacturing lighting solutions that others can’t. While most companies sell products, we deliver possibilities.

If you’re a sales rep looking to grow your territory, a designer looking for freedom, or an end user facing a lighting challenge no one else can solve, LA Lighting’s LCD Program is your next step.

Bring us your challenge, and we’ll make it our solution. Contact your local LA Lighting representative to get started.

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A New Approach to the LED Flat Panel

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Re-Imagining the LED Flat Panel

Over the past decade, LED flat panels have become a staple in offices, schools, and healthcare facilities. Their appeal comes from a clean, glowing aesthetic that mimics a skylight while fitting neatly into standard ceiling grids. But the story of the flat panel isn’t all bright. Beneath the sleek design are compromises that have long-term consequences for sustainability, maintenance, and flexibility.

Flat Panels: Convenience at a Cost

To create that even, glowing surface, backlit flat panels require two to three times as many LEDs as most other fixture types. That translates directly into more materials used, a larger carbon footprint, and higher manufacturing impact. Worse still, the majority of these fixtures are built overseas as low-cost, fully commoditized products. They’re often treated as disposable, with little thought given to repair or long-term performance.

The flat panel was designed with one purpose in mind, cost. Reduce the height of the fixture to the minimum to reduce shipping and material costs. The result: when failures occur, the problems compound. Proprietary drivers, tailored to handle the oversized LED arrays, are rarely replaceable. Once a driver fails (which is often just a few years into service), facility managers are left with no viable repair path. The same is true for the LED boards inside. There’s no plan for board replacement, so a single board failure often means the entire fixture ends up in the landfill.

In addition, most imported flat panels were never designed with advanced controls in mind. Many lack even basic dimming capability, leaving spaces over-lit and inflexible. Adding controls to an installed flat panel is a clunky, expensive process because they’re not serviceable from below the fixture without breaking the ceiling plane. All components are on the top of the fixture in the plenum.

The result is a widespread adoption of a product that locks facilities into a cycle of overconsumption and waste. For organizations seeking to improve both efficiency and sustainability, the flat panel’s shortcomings are hard to ignore.

A Better Way Forward

It doesn’t have to be this way. At L.A. Lighting, we’ve re-imagined the LED flat panel, adding durability, flexibility, and sustainability to its core.

We start with advanced optics, carefully positioned to scatter and distribute the light at the LED chip level. That illumination is then further diffused through a durable frosted lens, creating the smooth, glowing appearance of a traditional flat panel, without hotspots or shadows. This minimizes the amount of LED boards, reducing the carbon footprint.

Then we add the ingredient L.A. Lighting is famous for: Made-in-America quality. By using top-tier drivers and LED boards, we reduce failures to near zero, and ensure that when they do occur, replacement is straightforward. The traditional door frame facilitates bottom access, making maintenance simpler and more cost-effective. The flexible design also accommodates controls, tunable white, emergency battery backup, and other features that let specifiers and facility managers tailor the lighting to each space.

And of course, manufacturing fixtures in the United States, as we’ve done since our founding in 1988, reduces supply chain emissions while supporting American manufacturing. Suddenly, an LED flat panel goes from a feature-limited, disposable product to a long-term solution that balances aesthetics with real-world performance.

Unlimited Applications

With the full manufacturing capabilities of L.A. Lighting, we were able not to simply make a single flat panel fixture, but to create a method of adding the flat panel feature to all of our troffers. Specifying a flat panel solution in a surface mount, solid metal-sided fixture, or a cleanroom in ISO5, 6, or 7, or in a recessed grid-mount troffer are all possible now.

Further custom capabilities of L.A. Lighting enable the addition of color tuning, full dimming, RGB, DMX, advanced controls, and much more. Working with your L.A. Lighting sales professional to get the fixture your customer needs is a phone call away.

Re-Imagining What’s Possible

The LED flat panel doesn’t have to be a short-lived, unsustainable choice. With thoughtful design, it can be durable, serviceable, and adaptable, without sacrificing the look that made it popular in the first place. By choosing solutions that are built to last, facilities can reduce waste, cut lifecycle costs, and make meaningful progress toward sustainability goals.

L.A. Lighting’s re-imagined flat panel style troffer proves that efficiency and responsibility can go hand in hand. It’s time to move beyond disposable lighting, and toward fixtures designed for the future.

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Differences Between BABA, BAA, and Made in America Lighting

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Understanding BABA, BAA, and "Made in America": What Lighting Professionals Need to Know

For lighting professionals, the terms BABA, BAA, and Made in America are appearing more frequently in specifications and bid documents. As federal and state projects ramp up requirements for domestic sourcing, understanding these distinctions has become essential. Misinterpreting them can lead to compliance issues, costly project delays, or even being disqualified from a government contract. Here’s what you need to know, along with a closer look at the sometimes-misleading use of “Assembled in America.”

Buy America, Build America (BABA)

BABA is the newest standard, created as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 [1]. It is one of the strictest sourcing rules, requiring that construction materials, iron and steel, and manufactured products used in federally funded infrastructure projects be produced in the United States.

For manufactured products such as luminaires:

All manufacturing processes must take place in the U.S.
At least 55% of the cost of components must come from U.S.-sourced materials. [2]

This presents challenges for lighting manufacturers, since many drivers, LEDs, and electronic components originate overseas. Manufacturers like LA Lighting ensure BABA compliance by not only building their products in America, but by practicing careful supply chain management and maintaining thorough documentation.

Buy American Act (BAA)

The Buy American Act, originally passed in 1933, applies to goods purchased directly by the federal government:

The product must be manufactured in the U.S.
At least 65% of the cost of components must be domestic, with that threshold set to increase to 75% in 2029. [3]

Because BAA focuses on direct federal procurement, it applies in a narrower set of circumstances than BABA. Still, many government contracts specify BAA compliance, so it’s important for lighting specifiers and distributors to understand the distinction.

Made in America

The phrase “Made in America” is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). To use this label, a product must be “all or virtually all” made in the United States, including its components and processing. This standard can be stricter than BAA, since it looks beyond percentages and considers whether significant foreign content exists.

While “Made in America” can be a powerful marketing tool in the lighting industry, misuse of the label can bring serious consequences, including FTC investigations and fines.

The Not-So-Gray Area: "Assembled in America"

Some manufacturers import nearly complete fixtures and perform minimal work in the U.S. They may perform minor assembly, change packaging, or add a small component, then label those products as “Assembled in America.” While the FTC allows this label if the assembly is substantial and occurs domestically, simply tightening a few screws or attaching a label does not qualify. [4]

In the lighting industry, this can be particularly misleading. A fixture that looks American-made may, in reality, rely heavily on imported components. Specifiers and contractors should be wary of products that carry “Assembled in America” or “Made in America” labels while being sold at import-level prices. Requesting documentation to confirm whether a product genuinely meets BABA, BAA, or FTC standards can help identify bad actors.

Why It Matters for Lighting Professionals

For anyone involved in specifying, sourcing, or installing lighting on government projects, clarity on these terms is critical:

BABA: Strictest requirements, tied to federally funded projects.
BAA: Federal procurement, with a 65% domestic content threshold (increasing to 75% in 2029).
Made in America: FTC-regulated, requires “all or virtually all” U.S. origin.
Assembled in America: A marketing term with looser standards, often used to suggest U.S. origin without full compliance.

As more infrastructure and government projects emphasize domestic sourcing, lighting professionals who understand these nuances will be better equipped to avoid missteps and deliver compliant solutions. Knowing the difference between BABA, BAA, and “Made in America” ensures your projects run smoothly and your products meet the right standards.

Footnotes

[1] Full Text: Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021

[2] US Dept. Of Energy: Build America, Buy America Guidance

[3] Congress.gov: The Buy American Act and Other Federal Procurement Domestic Content Restrictions

[4] Federal Trade Commission: Complying with the Made in USA Standard

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Lowering Your Carbon Footprint with Made in America Lighting

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Lowering Your Carbon Footprint with Made-in-America Lighting

LED technology has dramatically improved lighting efficiency, reducing energy usage in homes, offices, warehouses, and public buildings across the country. But when it comes to environmental impact, energy savings are just one part of the equation. If your goal is to minimize your carbon footprint, then your retrofit strategy, where your lighting products are made, and how they’re made matters more than you might think.

How Retrofit Practices Have Evolved

From the 1980s through the early 2000s, lighting upgrades in existing buildings primarily relied on “retrofitting”. This approach involved replacing only certain components, such as incandescent and Halogen bulbs as well as fluorescent and HID lamps and ballasts, all while keeping the original fixture housing intact. Waste like worn out plastics was recycled, and hazardous materials like mercury or PCBs were managed through environmental services, leaving minimal waste generated. This method offered a relatively low-carbon, low-waste way to improve lighting efficiency.

But at the launch of LED, large fixture manufacturers not accustomed to the retrofit market launched full LED fixture replacements where retrofits had previously been the go to strategy. This strategy required discarding entire fixtures to achieve a newer appearance, which significantly increased the carbon footprint.

By 2010, full fixture replacements became the norm, with a small amount doing full door frame replacements for aesthetic upgrades but still generating more waste than a standard retrofit. As a result, large quantities of steel and plastic were discarded, leading to higher environmental costs due to both the materials themselves and the transportation and disposal required.

The Hidden Carbon Cost of Overseas Manufacturing

The process of manufacturing and transporting a lighting fixture across the globe involves a surprising amount of carbon. First, there are the emissions from the manufacturing process itself in overseas locations that do not have EPA-like bodies restricting waste from factories. In the United States, factories must comply with EPA regulations for air quality, wastewater discharge, paint application, and material sourcing. For example, powder coating in the U.S. must meet specific environmental standards [1], and steel production is subject to emissions limits [2]. That is not the case in many overseas factories, where paints may be solvent-based and emissions controls are minimal or nonexistent [3].

Then there is the shipping. A fixture manufactured overseas may travel thousands of miles by cargo ship, rail, and truck before it arrives at a U.S. job site. That journey adds layers of carbon output, especially when compared to sourcing lighting from a domestic manufacturer located just a few hundred miles from the project site.

And the impact doesn’t end there. A manufacturer supplying the entire U.S. from a single foreign facility must rely on an expansive distribution network. That means lighting products are trucked coast to coast, adding even more transportation-related emissions. In contrast, regional U.S. manufacturers can deliver within tighter geographic ranges, significantly reducing fuel use and carbon emissions.

What Makes U.S.-Made Lighting More Sustainable

Lighting products manufactured in the United States benefit from cleaner processes at every stage. Here are just a few examples:

Steel and aluminum sourcing: U.S. steel is produced under strict environmental controls. Domestic mills often use electric arc furnaces powered by cleaner energy sources, and scrap recycling is a core part of the process.
Paint and finish: Powder-coated finishes used by American manufacturers meet EPA standards, with rigorous controls on air quality and overspray capture. Overseas factories often use dip or spray methods without proper containment, releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air.
Plastics manufacturing: In the U.S., plastics used in lighting are subject to filtration and water-treatment requirements. Machinery used for extruding or thermoforming components must cool water and treat it before it re-enters the environment. In many foreign facilities, that water is discharged untreated.
Shorter supply chains: Products made close to where they are installed require far less transportation, which reduces emissions from fuel and logistics [4].

Why It Matters

If you’re aiming for LEED certification [5], working toward ESG goals, or simply trying to make more environmentally responsible decisions, the choice to buy American-made lighting can have a measurable impact. A fixture built in the U.S. does more than lower the carbon footprint of the lighting itself. It also reduces the carbon footprint of your entire project. Working with carbon auditors [6] and carbon credit organizations [7] can bring new layers of government support, incentive money, and market awareness to your carbon practices vs. your competition. Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) are taking more aggressive measures to align with contractors, specifiers, and manufacturers who have proven, auditable carbon footprints, and choose these vendors over their larger carbon footprint competitors every day.

The Bottom Line

Sustainability is not just about using less energy once a product is installed. It is about making smarter decisions across the full lifecycle of that product, from material sourcing to manufacturing to delivery. If you’re serious about lowering your carbon footprint, ask where your lighting was made, how it was made, and how far it had to travel. In most cases, the greenest option is the one that is built closer to home.

Footnotes

[1] EPA: Architectural Coatings: National Volatile Organic Compounds Emission Standards, and Clean Air Act Guidelines and Standards for Solvent Use and Surface Coating Industry

[2] EPA Air Emissions: Iron and Steel Manufacturing Effluent Guidelines, EPA Water Waste: Metal Products and Machinery Effluent Guidelines

[3] MDPI.com: Environmental Challenges and Current Practices in China—A Thorough Analysis

[4] MDPI Study: Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

[5] US Green Building Council: LEED v5

[6] Carbon Auditing Firms (examples): The Carbon Trust: carbontrust.com, Climate Stewards: climatestewardsusa.org, CO2balance: www.co2balance.com

[7] Carbon Finance Firms (examples): South Pole: www.southpole.com, EcoSecurities: ecosecurities.com

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What Tariffs Mean for the Lighting Industry

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The Effects of Tariffs on the Global Lighting Industry, and how Domestic Manufacturing is Paying Off

In today’s global lighting market, supply chain volatility and unpredictable tariffs are creating real challenges for manufacturers, especially those relying on overseas production. At LA Lighting, we’ve long taken a different approach: one rooted in domestic manufacturing, strategic sourcing, and decades-long relationships with key suppliers. That approach is now paying off.

Imports Causing Pricing and Logistical Headaches

The most obvious effect of tariffs? Higher prices for imported lighting products. For manufacturers that rely heavily on imported fixtures, drivers, LED boards, or housings, tariffs have created budgetary ripple effects that are difficult to manage. The unpredictability of tariff levels has made it challenging to plan long-term procurement strategies or offer stable pricing to customers.

Beyond price, tariffs have also introduced complications in inventory planning and logistics. Companies that import their luminaires often find themselves dealing with port slowdowns, added paperwork, and changing customs classifications that further delay time to market. For projects that are already on tight construction schedules, this level of uncertainty can be a serious liability.

Distributors and reps are feeling the pressure too, as they’re forced to explain price fluctuations and lead time variability to their customers. This has elevated the importance of working with manufacturers like LA Lighting who maintain domestic control over their production and sourcing, because it significantly reduces the risk involved in lighting projects. We’re finding that being able to say that a fixture is 100% made in the USA and not subject to volatile global trade conditions is no longer just a marketing point, it’s a real competitive advantage.

Keeping Costs Down and Reliability Up with American Steel

As part of our commitment to American manufacturing, we do all of our own metal fabrication using U.S.-sourced steel. This not only supports American industry but also shields us from many of the disruptions currently affecting our competitors.

Steel makes up a large percentage of the cost of any luminaire, and this is where our decades-long use of American steel puts us in a strong position. As tariffs on imported steel have driven up demand for American steel, we are protected by our long-standing supplier relationships. Because we’ve been working with domestic vendors for decades, we’re prioritized as steel supplies tighten. Meanwhile, companies who are just entering the U.S. steel market after years of importing are often left paying a premium that gets passed on to customers.

Sourcing the Right Components is Key

Although we manufacture in America, LA Lighting is not immune to global industry dynamics. Many LED chips and some electronic components still originate in China, and while we don’t source directly from China, there are indirect impacts that come through the broader supply chain. This is why we use board populators and driver manufacturers that operate in North America, allowing most tariffs to be absorbed upstream, reducing their impact on our operations.

In addition to domestic materials, we source many of our drivers and boards from Mexico. Thanks to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), these components arrive tariff-free, offering both cost savings and predictability. We work with leading suppliers like eldoLED and Signify, whose manufacturing operations in Mexico allow us to avoid the complexity and delays often associated with imports from Asia.

Sourcing and manufacturing in America comes with an added benefit: everything LA Lighting makes complies with Build America, Buy America ACT (BABA) and Buy American Act (BAA) requirements, enabling their use in certain federally-funded projects.

American Manufacturing: A Foundation for a Resilient Business Model

When you add it all up, the advantages of manufacturing in America have clearly grown in the era of tariffs. While others are forced to raise prices in response to volatile tariffs or transportation costs, we can take a measured approach. We adjust pricing only when absolutely necessary, based on real cost shifts from our vendors, not in anticipation of market trends or panic-driven changes.

Most importantly, our customers benefit from the confidence and continuity LA Lighting provides. We have the inventory, the relationships, and the infrastructure in place to meet demand without delay. We don’t have shipments held up at ports or supply contracts dependent on unstable geopolitical conditions.

For over 35 years, LA Lighting has focused on serving our local markets, supporting domestic manufacturing, and building a resilient business model. That foundation allows us to move forward, improve our products, and take care of our customers—regardless of what’s happening globally.

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