DMF Lighting has quickly become one of the top lighting fixture brands in the custom electronics industry, but the company is not a newbie. Indeed, DMF was established 30 years ago by Mark and Faye Danesh and today has offices in four countries. COO Michael Danesh and his team recently gave CE Pro an inside look at its Carson, Calif. Headquarters where the company shows off its engineering-based roots.
The company has three guiding principles, according to Danesh, that were established by his parents:
- To solve the needs of integrators
- To lead the market in terms of aesthetics
- To maintain its family-oriented culture
In all, DMF (which gets its name from the initials of the founders – Danesh/Mark/Faye) employs more than 30 engineers in the specialties of electrical, mechanical, thermal, optical, and software.
All the company’s products are developed completely from scratch. In the past five years, DMF Lighting has made heavy investments in its electrical engineering, and those investments are paying off in form of new products and solid market share.
The design and engineering teams work side by side on all product development, and the team is always thinking about the ease of installation for both retrofit and new construction, according to Danesh.

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That focus on installation can be seen first-hand in a mockup area in the headquarters that simulates in-the-field installation scenarios. The design and engineering teams are required climb ladders to test their efficiency installation for every product.
The end result is DMF’s Quick-ship simple housing that is the same for all fixtures. The modules are plug-and-play and easy to swap. A variety of lenses enable beam spreads to be changed simply.
“Reliability is key,” says Danesh. “We want our products to be able to be installed, and if necessarily troubleshooted so there are no callbacks.”
All products are tested for multiple criteria both incoming from the warehouse and outgoing. Among the testing procedures in place that have helped DMF achieve a 99.4% Accepted Quality Level success rate are testing for optical light output, insulation, rapid thermal cycling, elevated ambient burn-in, power cycling (10k cycles at 300VAC), and simulated lightning strikes (2kV), noise, color value, flicker, waterproof, airtightness, and more.
All that testing enables DMF to offer a 10-year warranty on its products, and calculate a 50,000-hour lifetime for products such as its DID2 Modules.
DMF’s claim to fame in the market is its modularity. All the fixture lines are broken down into three main interchangeable parts—housing, lighting modules, and trims — reducing the number of SKUs dealers must carry.
DMF will be at CEDIA Expo 2022 in Dallas with some new innovations for integrators.
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