How to Photograph Your Space

Photos of each room help us identify your existing fixtures and size your project before anyone visits the site. Five minutes with a phone camera is usually enough. Here is what to shoot and how.

How to photograph a room

• Turn the lights on first. Lit fixtures tell us far more than dark ones.
• Stand in the doorway or a corner. Hold the phone level, landscape orientation, and get the ceiling and the lights in the frame.
• One photo per room or area. Large open spaces such as a warehouse floor can take two or three photos from different corners.
• Add one close-up. Pick a single fixture and photograph it from directly below. If you can safely reach it, also photograph the label on the lamp or fixture body. Model and wattage markings are gold.
• Do not worry about quality. A slightly blurry photo that shows the whole ceiling beats a perfect photo of one bulb.

How to identify what you have

You do not need to know the answer, the photos do the work. But if you want to count fixtures room by room, this is what the common types look like:

• Troffers. Flat rectangular panels recessed into a grid ceiling, usually 2 ft by 4 ft or 2 ft by 2 ft. Typical in offices, schools and medical space. Older ones hold 2 to 4 fluorescent tubes behind a lens.
• High bays. Round or rectangular fixtures hanging from a high ceiling, common in warehouses and gyms. Older ones are metal halide and take minutes to warm up to full brightness.
• Strip lights. Long, narrow fixtures with exposed tubes, 4 ft or 8 ft, mounted to the ceiling or chained below it. Common in back rooms, corridors and shops.
• Wall packs. Box-shaped fixtures mounted on exterior walls, over doors and loading docks. Older ones give an orange light, which usually means high pressure sodium.
• Downlights. Round cans recessed into a finished ceiling, common in lobbies and retail.

Useful extras if you can spot them: how many tubes are inside a troffer or strip, any wattage printed on the fixture, and roughly how high the ceiling is.

What to send

• One wide photo per room or area, lights on.
• One close-up of a typical fixture, plus its label if reachable.
• If you are counting, the number of fixtures in each room. Our chat assistant keeps a running list for you as you go.

Upload the photos right in the chat with the paperclip button, and the assistant attaches them to your quote request. Prefer email? Send them to RFQ@ecoledco.com or call us at 631-306-7888.