LED Lights For Homes – Add Style And Reduce Your Costs
The LED technology has come a long way since its creation in 1927. LED lights for homes are now more popular than ever, and a natural choice for adding style to your home while simultaneously reducing your electrical costs.
LED Benefits
The benefits of LED home lighting are many. LED lights consume far less energy to produce the same amount of light. Typically, high efficient white-light home LED lights can produce over 40 lumens per watt, which is a 4 times better efficiency than that of a regular incandescent household lighting fixture.
LED lights for homes are also more durable than their incandescent counterparts. You will find LED fixtures having life expectancies of up to 50 000 hours and more depending on operating conditions and other factors. At 24 hours a day of continuous use, the result would be functional light for more than 5 years.
The third benefit with LED lights for homes is that unlike their incandescent counterparts, they don’t suffer from abrupt failures. Instead they will slowly start to dim away until complete failure. In fact, when the light has reached its expected lifetime, it’s still expected to shine with a 70% intensity. What this means to you is that you will have much better chance to replace old lights before they darken.
Your Choices
When dealing with LED lights for homes the assortment is great. You will find there are many options available regardless of whether you are just looking for a incandescent bulb replacement or are aiming for added style to your home.
Spotlights Vs Flood Lights
Which type to choose for your LED home lighting depends on the situation. These two lighting types create considerably different illumination patterns. Spotlights are used to illuminate narrow areas whereas flood lights on the contrary are more specialized in illuminating larger areas. While a spot light usually covers an area less than 45 degrees from the light fixture, a flood light can illuminate an area of up to 120 degrees from the fixture.
Light Bulb Replacements
Replacing your old light bulbs is relatively easy as there are LED replacement bulbs that fits in your pre-existing lamp sockets. You will easily find LED alternatives with life expectancies of up to 20-60 000 hours.
That being said, one would think that selecting a replacement would be just as straightforward. However, when you start browsing the LED lights for home catalogue you will soon find that there are some decisions that have to be made first.
First of all you have to decide the power of your LED lights for homes. For doing so you can compare the lumen ratings versus regular light bulbs. You will find there are 6-watt LED bulbs with lumen ratings matching those of regular incandescent bulbs. If you want to replace a 60-watt bulb you will probably want to go with a 9-watt LED bulb.
The second decision to be made is the nature of the light itself. Do you want it to be warm white light or cool white? Or are you perhaps looking for mood lighting or accent lighting?
Color Temperatures
Without going into too much details, color temperatures are measured in Kelvin and is a way of indicating the hue of specific colors. Standard incandescent light bulbs as an example radiates light with a temperature of 2700 K, which normally is labeled warm white. There are three main categories that will define your LED home lighting.
Warm White (2700K – 3000K)
Warm white consists of a yellowish light enriching warm colors in your home and suitable for areas where people relax. This is generally the temperature thought to be the most comforting. It’s the color temperature that is most similar to firelight, which humans have experienced for thousands of years.
Cool White (4000K)
Cool white is a bluer light that helps us to see contrasts, ideal for work areas.
Daylight (6000K and above)
Daylight lamps can be combined with other lights to create more rich colors, or to create a cool look. Mostly they are being used in industrial applications and are normally not recommended for home lighting.
Various Colors
There are also LED lights for homes in other colors than white. You will find lights with classic colors such as red, blue, green, yellow, and purple. More advanced LED home lighting products even come with the ability to continuously change the color being emitted.
