Greener Lighting Solution: LEDs for Your Home

Do you want to make your home as energy efficient as possible, but you find the light from CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lights) unappealing? It’s time to take a new look at modern LED lighting.

Advancements in LED lighting have completely changed the face of energy efficient lighting. When they were initially developed, LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) were solid bulbs first limited to single-bulb use. Gradually manufacturers began to cluster these bulbs to create more powerful light sources for flashlights and directional lighting. Now, however, advancements in clustering, lens design, and positioning have made these bulbs suitable replacements for almost any home lighting scenario.

While they used to be very expensive, research breakthroughs as recent as 2009 made the manufacture of LEDs drastically cheaper. With this breakthrough, LEDs rapidly became competitively priced with CFL bulbs.

Benefits of LED lighting include:

• High durability: While traditional bulbs have a filament which is fragile and subject to damage, LEDs handle shocks extremely well.

• Lower temperature: LEDs run cool, producing significantly less than 4 btus/hour, compare to more than 80 btus for incandescents. This is a real plus in the summer months when ambient heat from lighting can build up.

• Longevity: LEDs can live ten times longer than CFL bulbs and outstrip even the heartiest of incandescent bulbs.

• Energy efficiency: LED bulbs typically draw between two and 17 watts of electricity. CFLs and incandescent lights can consume three to thirty times more energy.

• Both cool & warm light available: Advancements have made it possible to choose “cool” lighting for big, task-based areas of the home and “warm” for accent lighting and more cozy applications.

• Standard, dimmable, and 3-way available: Many people don’t realize that there are LEDs now for a full range of switching applications and don’t necessarily require switch replacement (i.e. for dimmable applications).

If you’re looking for greener choices with a long-term benefit to your bank account, consider LEDs.