Environment Type
Emergency Lighting
Code-compliant emergency lighting engineered for industrial and hazardous facilities.
Why Emergency Lighting Is a Life-Safety Requirement, Not a Hazard Rating
Most facilities are required by code to maintain illuminated egress paths for a minimum duration after a power loss — commonly around 90 minutes, though exact requirements depend on the applicable building and fire code for the facility's jurisdiction.
For industrial sites, that requirement gets more complex. An emergency fixture installed inside a classified hazardous location has to carry the same classification rating as the area's primary lighting — for example, Class I Division 1 or Class I Division 2 in a facility handling flammable vapors, or Class II Division 1 in a facility generating combustible dust. An emergency fixture that isn't rated for its installation environment doesn't just fail the life-safety requirement — installed in the wrong location, it becomes an ignition source in exactly the area it's meant to help people evacuate.
Emergency Lighting vs. Hazard-Rated Lighting
These serve different purposes and are governed by different requirements:
- Emergency lighting is a life-safety requirement focused on maintaining visibility for evacuation during a power loss.
- Explosion Proof Lighting, Hazardous-Rated Lighting, etc. are focused on preventing ignition in a classified atmosphere.
In a classified hazardous location, a facility typically needs both — primary lighting rated for the hazard classification, and emergency lighting that meets that same classification while also satisfying life-safety code requirements. Neither substitutes for the other.
Where Emergency Lighting Is Used
- Egress paths, stairwells, and exit routes — code-required illumination for safe evacuation
- Control rooms and critical operations areas — maintaining visibility for critical decision-making during an outage
- Hazardous-location facilities — requiring classification-rated emergency fixtures alongside primary lighting
- LNG, petrochemical, and industrial processing sites — combined life-safety and hazard-classification requirements in the same fixture
Choosing the Right Emergency Fixture
Emergency lighting in a classified hazardous location isn't a standard emergency fixture with a battery pack bolted on — it needs to meet the required egress illumination duration and the area's hazard classification at the same time. Confirm both specifications, along with exactly which areas of the facility are classified, before specifying — ideally in consultation with the facility's code compliance or safety team, since egress duration and hazard classification are governed by separate standards and don't automatically align.