Visa Lighting Introduces Sole Illuminated Mirror

First LED illuminated mirror was designed for high abuse environments where safety and damage-resistance are crucial.

Visa Lighting has introduced Sole, the first LED illuminated mirror designed for high abuse environments where safety and damage-resistance are crucial.

LED illuminated mirrorVisa Lighting specialists and engineers worked directly with behavioral health facility specifiers to determine what they need from the lighting industry. Sole is the first solution to emerge from those conversations, and is among Visa Lighting’s growing collection of high abuse luminaires.

While Sole was designed and tested with behavioral health facilities in mind, this mirror boasts a minimal, modern aesthetic and can perform in many other high traffic areas like hotel rooms, fitness centers, college dorms, and public restrooms.

In the last few years, furniture and fixtures throughout behavioral health design have become warmer and more welcoming. Studies continue to show that non-institutional furnishings in behavioral health facilities can positively affect the wellbeing of both patients and staff. Patient rooms, specifically bathrooms, are crucial sites for comfortable design as they are often the area where patients spend the most time by themselves. This is why Visa Lighting designed Sole to be both visually pleasing and incredibly safe.

“We started with a mirrored polycarbonate,” says Cole Gravning, Visa Lighting Product Engineer. “Then we removed the mirroring in sections and sandblasted to the correct thickness for diffusing light without losing durability.”

Sole is ETL wet-listed, IP65 rated, and rated IK10+, the highest degree of protection against external mechanical impact. The IK rating scale is intended to measure an electrical enclosure’s ability to resist impact energy levels, measured in joules. These tests are used to evaluate street and roadway lighting products in which high-impact glass protects the light source. An IK10+ rating means that Sole passed impact tests up to 100 joules.

LED illuminated mirrorIn behavioral health applications, this means Sole is vandal-resistant against extremely high impacts: it cannot shatter or malfunction from being hit. Sole is also designed to be ligature-resistant, which means that no part of the fixture’s edges or components can be used as an anchor point to attach rope or fabric.

Two models are currently available in the Sole family: the oval mirror, which is 24” wide and 34” high, and the rectangular mirror, which is 20” wide and 30” high. Both have a recessed depth of 3” and are available in 16 standard finishes. The lighted portions of the mirror are curved along the side edges of the oval model and vertically aligned parallel to the frame in the rectangular model. They also include an optional amber nightlight for extra comfort, eliminating the need for an additional light source.

Technological innovations like Sole in high abuse applications can promote safety and durability without losing patient comfort or aesthetic control.