The Real Cost of Non-Compliant Lighting

What every contractor and property owner should know before the next fit-out, upgrade or maintenance call.

Lighting is easy to take for granted. It is often only when a fitting fails, a switchboard trips or an insurer starts asking questions that anyone stops to consider where the lights came from, and whether they were tested for Australian conditions. A recent industry study suggests that question is far more urgent than many contractors and property owners realise.

In its first Online Marketplace Compliance Exercise, Lighting Council Australia assessed 131 lighting products sold to Australian consumers between March and April 2026 across Amazon, eBay, Temu, AliExpress, specialist lighting retailers and major lighting chains. More than 73 per cent of those products failed one or more key Australian compliance requirements. For anyone who buys, installs or is responsible for lighting, that finding should prompt immediate concern.

A market flooded with products nobody is checking

The failures were not spread evenly. Temu and AliExpress recorded compliance pass rates of zero per cent across the products sampled, while Amazon passed just 8 per cent, eBay 12 per cent and Kogan 38 per cent. By contrast, the specialist and large-retail channels sampled — Beacon Lighting, JD Lighting and Lights4Less — achieved between 80 and 100 per cent. Across the general marketplaces the average pass rate was just 11.5 per cent, against 93.3 per cent for the specialist and large-retail channels. Where a product comes from, and who stands behind it, clearly matters.

Source: Lighting Council Australia, 2026 Online Marketplace Compliance Report.

The problems appeared in every category assessed, including LED lamps, downlights, outdoor lighting, decorative lighting and portable plug-in products. Portable plug-in lighting recorded a zero per cent pass rate, while novelty items such as LED strip lighting, fairy lights and neon signs also failed at high rates. Separately, 83.3 per cent of the retrofit lamps sampled could not demonstrate compliance with Australia's Greenhouse and Energy Minimum Standards, casting doubt over the energy-efficiency figures printed on their packaging.

How compliance varied by category

How "non-compliant" actually means

Lighting products are not decorative accessories. They are electrical products wired into the mains supply of the buildings you work in and own. Australian regulations require suppliers to demonstrate electrical safety, electromagnetic compatibility and, for many products, energy-performance compliance. Those requirements are what separate a well-made luminaire from one that overheats, interferes with other equipment or fails long before its stated life.

The most common issue the study identified was not a missing label or an administrative oversight. It was the absence of a legally accountable supplier. More than 61 per cent of the products assessed came from businesses with no registration in Australia's Electrical Equipment Safety System, meaning they had no legal authority to supply regulated electrical equipment into this market. In practice, many of these products are shipped directly from overseas and installed in Australian buildings with no identifiable local business standing behind them.

Why this matters for your property

Safety is the first casualty

Non-compliant lighting can overheat, cause electrical faults and start fires. The tests these products skip are precisely the ones designed to reduce the risk of electric shock, fire and premature failure. When a fitting has never been checked against Australian electrical and safety standards, that risk is passed straight to the building, its occupants and the people who installed it.

The cheapest option is rarely the best

Compliance is not free. Responsible suppliers invest in testing, certification, registration and ongoing regulatory obligations, and those costs are built into their products. These tests are carried out by certified laboratories, and all testing results and compliance information must be maintained by the responsible supplier. Suppliers who ignore those obligations can sell for less precisely because they have avoided the work that makes a product safe and durable. A cheap fitting that fails within twelve months, inflates energy bills through overstated efficiency claims, or forces an early refit will almost always cost more than the compliant product it replaced.

A significant part of our business now involves replacing failed LED products that have lasted only one to two years.

Your reputation travels with the fitting

For contractors, every installation carries your name. A product that flickers, fails or causes a fault reflects the workmanship around it, not just the component inside it. Installing compliant, accredited product is one of the simplest ways to protect the quality of your work and the confidence of the clients who rely on it.

How to tell compliant from non-compliant

Lighting Council Australia has created an accreditation system to help buyers, contractors and property owners distinguish compliant products from non-compliant alternatives. The Lighting Council Accreditation mark draws that line clearly. It signals that a product, and the business behind it, have been independently audited annually and confirmed as meeting Australia's standards for safety, performance and compliance, rather than simply self-declared as compliant.

The Lighting Council Accreditation process is not a one-off tick-box exercise. Businesses are assessed against six areas: regulatory compliance, product safety and conformity, environmental responsibility, social responsibility, quality systems and product stewardship. The mark is then maintained through ongoing annual audits, packaging checks and claims verification, so standards are upheld year after year rather than only at the point of first approval. For a anyone specifying or selecting lighting product, one question does much of the work: is this supplier Lighting Council Australia accredited?

The long-term value of getting it right

enLighten is a Lighting Council Australia accredited member, which means our products and our business are independently assessed and audited for compliance every year, matching the rigour the Council is now urging the wider market to adopt. As a privately owned Australian company that designs and manufactures its own commercial lighting, we build for local grid and regulatory conditions rather than adapting an overseas design and hoping it holds up.

That commitment shows up in the things that matter to a building over time. Every enLighten luminaire carries a minimum five-year warranty, and our ranges are supplied with spacing tables that set out the correct spacings and mounting heights to support compliant lighting design. The result is lighting that is safe to install, transparent about its performance and engineered to keep working long after a cheaper, untested alternative would have failed.

Compliant lighting is not the expensive option; it is the one that protects the people in your building, the integrity of your installation and the value of your investment. In a market where more than seven in ten products are failing basic tests, choosing an accredited, Australian supplier is the clearest way to be sure the lights you rely on were built to last.

About enLighten

enLighten Australia Pty Ltd is a privately owned Australian company that designs and manufactures intelligent LED commercial lighting for car parks, strata and residential common areas, warehouses, and outdoor and emergency applications. As a Lighting Council Australia accredited member, our products and processes are independently audited for compliance each year.

Is the lighting in your building actually compliant?

If you can't trace the supplier, you can't be sure. Talk to enLighten about accredited, Australian-designed lighting that's built to keep working.

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