Four decisions: how wide the beam is, how honestly it renders colour, how big a hole it needs in the ceiling, and what shade of white it throws. Get the first three wrong and no amount of quality in the fitting will rescue the room.
Beam angle has a precise definition: the angle across which the light stays at or above half its peak intensity. Outside that cone the light does not stop — it falls away. The angle at which it drops to a tenth of peak is the field angle, and it is always considerably wider.
This matters because two fittings both quoted at 36° can look different on site if one has a soft edge and the other a hard one. The beam angle tells you where the useful light ends, not where the light ends.
The arithmetic is worth knowing, because it settles most arguments on site. For a beam angle θ at a height h above the surface being lit:
diameter = 2 × h × tan(θ ÷ 2)
A 36° beam from a 3 m ceiling onto a table at 0.75 m — so h = 2.25 m — lights a pool about 1.46 m across. The same fitting at 24° gives about 0.96 m. At 15°, about 0.59 m.
That is the whole reason narrow beams exist. A 15° spot on a 2.25 m drop puts a controlled circle on a single object; a 36° beam from the same point washes a group.
| Beam | What it is for | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| 15° | A single object — sculpture, a display plinth, one painting | Scalloping if used in a row for general light |
| 24° | Accent on merchandise, a bar back, a feature wall | Too tight for circulation lighting |
| 36° | General retail and hospitality — the default, for a reason | Too wide to make one object the hero |
| 55° | Low ceilings, wall grazing, broad even cover | Glare risk if the source is shallow-set |
Enlighten Pro supplies 36° as standard across the COB range, with 15°, 24° and 55° available as options at additional cost. Diffused fittings — downlights, panels, linear — are a different animal at 90–120°, and are not spotlights however they are described.
CRI (Ra) scores how faithfully a source renders colour against a reference. Ra 80 is the commercial baseline. Ra 90 and above is what you specify when colour is the product.
The number most worth asking about is not Ra at all — it is R9, the deep red sample. Ra averages eight pastel samples and does not include R9, so two fittings can both claim Ra 80 while one renders skin, red fabric and raw meat convincingly and the other renders them grey. Where reds matter, ask for R9 specifically.
| Specify | Where |
|---|---|
| Ra 80 | Circulation, back of house, offices, car parks, general retail of non-colour-critical goods |
| Ra 90+ | Fashion and textile retail, restaurants, hotel rooms and lobbies, galleries — any space where people are seen |
| Ra 96+ | Jewellery, art, food halls, colour matching — where a wrong red loses a sale |
There is a real trade-off. Higher CRI is achieved with phosphor conversion that costs some efficacy, so a 90 CRI fitting generally delivers fewer lumens per watt than an 80 CRI one from the same platform. That is the honest reason not to specify 96 everywhere.
Enlighten Pro supplies Ra 80+ and Ra 90+ across the range, with Ra 96+ available on the COB families.
Read every lumen figure with its conditions. A lumen number means nothing without the colour temperature and CRI it was measured at — the same fitting measures higher at 6000K/Ra 80 than at 3000K/Ra 90. Every figure Enlighten Pro publishes is stated at 4000K, CRI 80. If a competing figure does not say, it is not comparable.
The cutout is the hole in the ceiling. Everything else about a downlight can be changed after handover; the hole cannot — not without a ceiling repair, paint, and an argument.
Three things to settle before ordering:
85 × 60 Cutout 75 means an 85 mm face, 60 mm deep, into a 75 mm hole.The renovation trap. Replacing fittings in an existing ceiling means matching the existing cutout, not choosing a new one. A fitting whose face is smaller than the old hole leaves a visible gap; one whose cutout is larger means enlarging every hole in the building. Measure an existing hole before specifying a replacement — and where the sizes do not line up, choose a model whose face covers the old hole.
Enlighten Pro stocks 3000K, 4000K, 5000K and 6000K as standard across the range, and can supply any temperature between 2700K and 6500K to order.
The rule that saves trouble: keep one colour temperature within a single visual field. Mixed CCT in one ceiling reads as a fault, not as a design decision.
Where a scheme genuinely needs the shade decided after installation — a hotel that wants warm evenings and neutral mornings — tunable white is available on the COB spot, downlight, surface and magnetic ranges, tuned over Bluetooth, RF or DALI-2.
Two fittings with identical output can be comfortable or unbearable depending on how deeply the source is set and what the reflector is finished in.
A recessed, dark-finish reflector hides the source from normal viewing angles; a shallow, bright one puts it straight in the eye. In offices and anywhere with screens, ask for the UGR figure. In retail, deep-set is usually the right instinct regardless of what the number says.
121 codes across 39 model families, 3–50 W, with the cutout stated on every one.