The Story of Sterling Lighting
Sterling Lighting started with a problem. I already owned a local installation company, now Dayloom, and had been installing outdoor lighting for more than a decade. But I didn't trust the fixtures we were installing.
We had found an LED supplier in California selling premium fixtures with a 20-year warranty. Installations were going well until the lights started failing. Within 12 months and more than 700 fixtures, half had failed, and warranty claims took four to six months to resolve. We spent our time repairing lights instead of designing new systems, and it cost us time, money and our clients' trust.
So my business partner, Damien Sanchez, and I set out to find a better luminaire. That work began in 2010 and led us to found Sterling Lighting in 2011.
Sterling Lighting's founders: Josh Palmer, Damien Sanchez and Patrick Harders
We quickly learned that even the largest manufacturers were struggling with LED. Since we couldn't rely on what was on the market, we partnered with a team of engineers to solve LED's technical problems ourselves.
Our first line kept things simple: retrofit LED lamps in fixtures with heat sinking built in. Those changes gave us enough confidence to replace every faulty fixture we'd installed and to start growing the new company.
We kept making small improvements and tracking every one. Before long we had taken lamp-based LEDs as far as they could go, so we designed a dedicated LED luminaire with proper heat dissipation. Our goal was a luminaire with the heat sinking of a dedicated LED and the easy service of a drop-in lamp. The new design had five brightness settings and four beam patterns, all in a single luminaire. We launched our first dedicated LED luminaires in 2013. Read more about that decision in What Is a Dedicated LED, Anyway?
Today we still test every luminaire and keep our hands in the dirt so we can keep improving. We're committed to designing new luminaires, refining our current line and selling directly to professionals, with no middleman. Our goal is to help your business succeed so you have more time for what matters most.
Explore the full Sterling luminaire line.
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About the author: Patrick Harders, LC, is co-founder and CEO of Sterling Lighting and founder and principal lighting designer of Dayloom. He has more than 25 years of experience designing and installing outdoor lighting, and he's one of only five landscape lighting designers in North America with Lighting Certified (LC) accreditation. His projects have won multiple international lighting awards, including landscape lighting winners in 2018 and 2021, and he leads design of Sterling's luminaires.
