I went shopping to day over at Target.
BTW I do shop at Target and have been for years, but always used just cash only and never a debt or credit card.
Actually I have never used my debt card anywhere as I don't like the idea of a store having a direct link to my bank account.
I am a old school cash type guy for the most part.

But back to what I was going to say.
What was I going to say?

Oh yeah,

They installed a long row of new freezer cases and they looked really good, so I looked inside and was surprised to find all LED lighting in strips close to CW in color or just a little more blue than CW.
While I have to say it did look good, but when reading the labels there was the usual LED "sparkle" reflection off the package that I never noticed before under the old fluorescent lighting.
I did not notice any strobe effect, just the sparkle.

I don't think most people would notice or it would cause a person not to buy the product, but it is different.
Maybe some people like the sparkle and it could even make the product look better, but I don't really like it.
As you can tell I am not a fan of LED lighting for general lighting.
It is better than it was a few years ago, but I would not want to have them in my home.
I don't need to sparkle or strobe.

I Guess I had better stock up on T12 eight foots CW while still I can.

  

The "sparkle" effec t came from the light originating from many rather sharp, pointy light sources. The same will come, when having a lot of small incandescents or e.g. "crystal" chandelier with few strong halogens in it.
To supress it, you will have to put a diffuse lens over the LED's, but the distance to the LED's should be at least half of the individual LED spacing. Then the sparkle effect will completely disappear.

For the inner refrigerator illumination I see the LED stripes as not as bad idea: You do not need as much light there, you need it for just few seconds at a time and you need it spread over the complete space. The first two are quite well served by the incandescent, but even a low power incandescent make the light just on one place. So when the refrigerator is more full, the other corners use to be dark.
Putting there a fluorescent is a nonsense: For the few seconds you will barely start it correctly and moreover the cold temperatures will make it very inefficient there...

But it annoy me way more, when I see something like you are describing: Useless, blinding light made just to show off (Hey, we put LED's there, they are so sexy...), but not to do any real work (illuminate the content), mainly when i KNOW it quite easy and cheap to make it really so, it would be really working better...

Hi Medved,

Well the LED lighting did look ok more less.
But it did not have that warm fuzzy feeling about it that I get from a CW fluorescent light.
Like I say, most people may not notice or care.
But I do wonder if the sparkle and light color affects people on a subconscious level that they don't actually realize.
The LED color was more blue than a CW almost a daylight.

May be they did testing of commercial freezer cases first to see if there was any difference in what people bought if the lighting was LED or fluorescent.
Did they buy more or less?
Or different items altogether.
Color and lighting affects people in different ways.

The total amount of blue LED light out through the glass doors of the rows of commercial freezer cases was over whelming the surrounding general CW fluorescent lighting of the store.
Also I would say that the lighting level of the freezer cases were too bright, much brighter than needed to illuminate the packages.
 
Like you say, it was almost like, "look over here" instead of providing a pleasant display of the products through the glass doors of the freezer.
It did not draw me to it, I tended to stand back from it as it just looked kind of odd to me.

I did watch for a while the reaction of other people walking by the glass freezer cases and noticed the same thing.
They did not necessarily look away from the cases.
But they did stand at a distance from the freezer cases.
I can see why, it was not a inviting looking display of products.
But more like a odd circus event to be viewed from a distance.
More of a "look over here" type look than a "come over here" type look.

The older freezer units with the CW fluorescent lights never did that.
They just blended in with the surrounding CW lighting of the store.
And it looked like a old friend when I would reach for the door.
The freezer cases looked natural in their surroundings.

The packaging of products and the color of the packaging affects the buyer in different ways.
I did not like the sparkle or the color of the LEDs, but I knew the product so I bought it as usual because I know what to expect from it.
But the sparkle effect and the blue color that was bluer that the general CW lighting made the items look kind of odd.
The contrast between the case lighting and the general store lighting was very noticeable.
They did not blend in at all.

My most favorite color for cars is white.
I have a White SUV that I ordered white because I like white.
But I have had other colors of cars in the past that tended to be blue and two were black.

But in those cases, I bought the car not on a color preference, but because of the price.
So maybe price over color is a factor in frozen products as well.
I don't know.
Maybe there has been a study on this.

I agree that the LED lighting could have done better.
I poked my head inside to look and it looked like a double row of bare blue LEDs on a cheap plastic strip that flopped around when I touched it.
No lens or diffuser.
More like a after thought instead of engineered into the design.
Kind of cheap looking strip setup really.

But from a energy stand point, the refrigeration units for the reach in freezers has to suck up way more energy than the lighting anyway.
So I would guess that the LEDs were used more as a cost cutting move than a energy saving move.
And at the same time the freezer manufacturer could claim a energy savings while the refrigeration unit uses as much energy as it did before.

But anyway I am still not going to give up my fluorescent lights at home any time soon.

 

I meant the household refrigerators, where the light turn ON only when you open the door for the few seconds you are looking inside... There the LED lighting use to be advertized as an "extra special feature, why you should buy this product and not the competitor's machine".

With the commercial it is not that far different, don't forget the store managers are no experts in lighting technology, so their decisions are steered by the same as when buying the fridge for home.
In such commercial freezer you should not forget, than any heat the lighting create should be pumped out by the refrigeration machinery. So 1W extra in lighting mean another ~1..2W extra consumption of the machinery, so it does make very sense to boost the efficacy as much as possible. And due to the low operating temperature, the fluorescents are far away from being much efficient, except the very expensive "polar" models.
So with that, the LED is really the cheapest light source available. But the problem is, unlike fluorescents, you, as the user, can not change the color tone, as the LED's are fixed part of the machine. So when someone is using 5000K in his store, he need 5000K light there. And if you are using 4000K, you will need 4000K and so on. And problem is, to fulfill that, all the machines would have to be custom fitted and that will make them more expensive.

Other story is the diffuser: The LED's look brighter without the diffuser, so at first glance, when you are looking to buy a new equipment for your store, for the same brightness you seem to suffice with way less power, so it appear as excellent power saving, so no wonder many such buyers prefer the LED equipped machines.
But in reality, the goods are then sitting in a dim space. But you recognize that only after the machine is installed in your store and filled with goods. But then it is quite late...

I don't know much about LEDs except so far anyway the ones I have seen I don't care much for.

It would seem to me that a LED could be made the same color or close as a CW fluorescent.
But I don't know.
Also I would think there could be a way to adjust up or down the output of the LEDs to match brightness as the general lighting.
In any case diffusers would seem to be needed for sure.

As far as less heat from a LED than a fluorescent bulb, I would agree that there would be less heat for the refrigeration units to deal with, but the doors are swinging open and closed all day long and at night when they are stocked the usual procedure is to block the door open with the carts while stocking the shelves.

I guess there would still be some energy savings.

I just think the case lighting could have been done better and blend in better with the rest of the store to give a more pleasing buying experience for the customer.

But it their store and their problem not mine.

Update: 2/11/14
 
Well I went back to target today and looked at the freezer cases again and they don't look so bad other than the sparkle and the fact that they are not the same color as the general lighting.

I looked inside and found that there were just bare blue LEDs with just a clear plastic cover, not defused at all.
While there was blue light, shadows and glare (sparkle), I don't think it made the products look too different than before.
At least I could detect no strobe effect.
But the daylight blue freezer case brightness did overwhelm the stores general lighting.

I did notice that some of the strips already failed and they are only a few weeks old.
Not the individual LEDs but the whole strip.
It will be interesting to see how long they last.

Well the good news is they looked real cheap so I would guess they would be cheaper to replace than a fluorescent bulb or ballast even if you had to replace them once a month.
Of course it could be just a fuse I guess.

One thing too is that they are on a sensor to detect motion, so as you walk down along the cases they go on and off.
Kind of strange, may be this is why they fail.

I would say they don't look bad, but at the same time, they don't look good either.
Anyway, that is my opinion.
 






   

Of course, the LED's could be made of any color you want, include e.g. CW.
The problem is, each store uses different color in their general lighting, so would need different color in the display cases.
As fluorescents were replaceable, it was dead easy: Just use the matched fluorescent tubes there.
But with LED's, where the LED's are part of the freezer, this customization would have to be made by the freezer manufacturer and/or service tech. Both variants would made them more expensive, so such customization is then usually skipped. With that, what the maker can do is just select the color, which is most frequently wanted by their cusomers.

For the "failing stripes" I won't be surprised, the whole failure is just the sensor optics getting dirty (a fog/ice deposit, combined with dust).
And or other frequent fault are cracked wires...

Maybe they are starting a new trend where different areas of the store have different lighting.
Not just different lighting but different color of lighting.

Of course incandescent mini spots have been used for years in conjunction with CW fluorescent bulbs and don't look out of place really.
But daylight and CW side by side looks a little odd for sure.

As far as the failing LED strips, they are only about three weeks old, so that could be a problem.

But like I say it is their problem not mine.

I bought some frozen waffles out of the "blue" freezer case and they taste just like the frozen waffles out of the old "CW" freezer case.

So no problem there.

The LEDs will likely expand and get better in time. Usually the incandescents wastes alot of energy and don't lasts as long. I noticed better differences when buying CFLs & LEDs. When I first experienced buying a 6500K CFL bulbs, I was able to see things better and read things better lightingwise. The LEDs on the chandaliers at my home looked better than the incandescents on the chandaliers at my home. I haven't used LED yet on regular light fixture. But if I do, hopefully I can find 6500K or 7000K color temps for those. I think those would give out better light than those 2700K color temp that incandescents are. I do like experiencing energy efficient and Energy Star products.

Larry, I wouldn't think it would hurt to troubleshoot. Hopefully you also have stores like Lowes & Home Depot too.