Save Money

The most compelling reason to switch to LED lighting is the fact, that in a standard household, lighting represents as much as 20% of the overall energy consumption. With a saving of up to 80% of the power consumed by old fashioned lamps, switching to LED means more pounds left in your pocket! Depending on your usage of lighting you could save several hundred pounds each year by moving to LED technology.

Eco Friendly

LED lights don’t waste energy. It has been estimated that as much as 80-90% of the energy used by an incandescent light bulb is lost in the form of heat, with only 10-20% of its output being actual light. Meaning that, incandescent and halogen lamps also consume very high amounts of energy for the light provided. Where does the excess energy go? Again, the excess energy is converted into heat and released into the environment resulting in wasted energy.

Therefore, when you replace your old incandescent, halogen or CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) lamps with LED, you are reducing the harmful CO2 levels being released into the air. Because LED lights use less energy, power plants that produce electricity, by burning fossil fuels and oil, will be able to reduce their activity, meaning that less carbon emissions are released into the environment.

Additionally LED lights do not contain harmful metals. Halogen, incandescent, and CFLs contain heavy metals (mercury and lead, most toxic). Discarding these lamps in to the environment, (eg. in landfills) can cause the lead and mercury content to mix into your source of water or vapourise into the air you breathe.

LIGHTING WITH LED TECHNOLOGY IS A WIN WIN FOR ALL.

SMD (Surface Mounted Device) LED lamps are currently the most cost effective and efficient method of lighting.

Lumens

The old method of judging just how much light a lamp (bulb) would give out, was measured in watts. However, watts don’t necessarily measure the brightness of a lamp, only the amount of electricity it uses.

LED lamps can use up to 90% less energy than an incandescent or halogen lamp of equivalent brightness. LEDs are far more efficient at converting electricity, measured in watts, into light, measured in lumens. Therefore, a typical 4 watt LED lamp, depending on design, might easily achieve a light output comparable to a 40/50 watt halogen lamp, sometimes higher, providing a considerably higher lumen to watt ratio.

Our old way of understanding the brightness of a lamp, by assessing the amount of watts consumed, is now redundant, in the case of LED Lamps.

Lumens (lm) measure the amount of light produced by a lamp which is visible to the human eye. The higher the lumen rating, the brighter the lamp will appear.

Therefore, today’s LED technology has completely changed lighting as we know it and the method by which we should judge the brightness we require from a lamp.

The higher the lumen count, the brighter the lamp.

Bearing in mind that some LED lamps will be designed to provide brighter light than others, how should you judge what is sufficient light, measured in Lumens, for the purpose envisaged for your lamp (lamps)?

Until recently, we used to look for the wattage of a lamp to judge how bright it might be, for example:

• A 40 watt lamp would look quite dull. Perhaps used for mood on a wall mounted lamp or in a cupboard.
• A 60 watt lamp, while a little brighter might be used in a small room, perhaps a bedroom.
• A 100 watt lamp might be used to provide light for a larger area, perhaps a dining room.
• A 150 watt lamp would be considered very bright in some rooms, perhaps most appropriate for a kitchen.

Today’s new generation of LED lamps are much brighter than earlier and older generation LED lamps. ElekTek lamps incorporate new generation SMD technology.

The table below should enable the selection of the appropriate LED brightness for the purpose envisaged:

Watts to Lumens Comparison Table of Traditional Incandescent Lamps and LED Lamps

These figures are approximate and used only to illustrate the correlation between various wattages and lumen values. LED lamps vary in design and efficiency.

Colour

Colour is not brightness.

Did you know that LED lamps provide a choice of the light colour that they emit?

Colour Temperature - With conventional lamps, choosing the ‘colour of light’ emitted by a lamp was never a choice that was generally available. With some LED products, there is a choice of colours. Choosing a colour will set the mood of your space.

Correlated Colour temperature (CCT) in lighting, describes how the colour of the light appears from a lamp, measured in Kelvins (K).

There is a scale from 1000K (very red) to 10,000K (very blue) (see the Light Colour table). The higher up the scale you go, the closer the light resembles blue daylight.

Colour temperature does not describe the actual temperature of the lamp itself, but the colour it produces and counter-intuitively; the higher the colour temperature the ‘cooler’ a lamp will look.

Warm or Cool?

There are no rules - the choice is about personal preference and use. If you want a modern, clean look, you may prefer the cleaner, brighter feel of a cool white lamp (4000K+). Cool white light contains more blue light and looks brighter to the eye (this is why cool white bulbs have a higher lumen output when compared to the equivalent warm white bulb). For example in our ElekTek Contemporary LED Ceiling Pendant Lamp Kit, we have chosen a 4000K temperature, which we believe is ideal for Living Spaces, Kitchens, Studies and Bathrooms. This colour light is thought to have an uplifting effect on some people, especially in the darker months of Autumn and Winter.