Dear Reader:

Not all lighting fixtures are designed and built to do all things .. no surprise there. There are a number of fixture types that are what might be called ‘Specialty Fixtures’, as they are manufactured for a particular type of work, typically in a harsher environment, frequently involving dust, dirt or water.

These have various resistances to “ingress”, that being what it takes for that those solids or liquids to actually penetrate a fixture rendering it inoperable.

Think about your phone as an analogy. It is designed for some protection from the elements, but not a great deal – you wouldn’t want to submerge it in water. The various degrees of protection comprise a rating system developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission.

Linak publishes a wonderful explanation of this system on their website, with robust descriptions for each of the ratings, found here: What is an In...