GB 30255-2026, the updated mandatory standard for minimum allowable values of energy efficiency and energy efficiency grades for LED lighting products, is now in force with new requirements on luminous efficacy, colour rendering index and flicker. For manufacturers, the real pressure does not arrive on the day the standard is published — it arrives during the year-end promotion and stocking season, when models with outdated efficiency labels are the first to be pulled from listings.
Europe is raising its bar at the same time. The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive has applied in full since May 2026, requiring automatic lighting controls and building automation systems in new commercial buildings. The minimum efficacy for lighting products entering the EU market is 120 lm/W, corresponding to class D on the new label, alongside standby power of no more than 0.5 W (2.0 W for networked products), flicker of PstLM no more than 1.0 and SVM no more than 0.4, L70/B50 lifetime of at least 6,000 hours, and CRI of at least 80. Products previously marketed as A++ may now land only at class D or E under the new scale.
Efficacy cannot be bought with a single component swap. Reaching a higher lumen-per-watt figure at luminaire level depends on the combined performance of LED chips, driver conversion efficiency, optical transmittance and thermal headroom. Once flicker and colour rendering are constrained at the same time, the room for low-cost shortcuts narrows sharply. In other words, this round of standards filters out not design capability but the gamble of "passing the test yet failing a re-check".
As a manufacturer of LED downlights and spotlights, KINXZO treats efficacy, flicker depth, colour rendering and colour consistency as routine pre-shipment checkpoints, with records kept for every batch. For products shipped to the EU, we prepare the documentation required for EPREL registration and the QR-coded A–G energy label; on the driver side, a D4i version is available on request so dimming, energy metering and diagnostics are solved inside one driver. For customers in the middle of a label changeover, our advice is plain: audit the measured data of every model currently on sale first, then decide whether to relabel or redesign — do not wait until the promotion goes live.