What is LED Lighting?

LED lighting has many advantages, including environmental, economical, safety and reliability compared to traditional lighting sources, making them now the go to option for commercial, industrial, retail and residential areas. In this article, we will discuss What are LEDs, Why you would use LEDs over traditional options such as halogen and SON, and Where you can utilize LED technology.

What is LED Lighting?

LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. This is a semiconductor light source which will emit light when a current flows through it; compared to traditional halogen or incandescent options which emit light when heated, or fluorescent options, which emit light via a chemical reaction.

Why LED Lighting?

LED lighting is now the go-to option for lighting for many different reasons. Here are just a few reasons Why to upgrade your lighting:

• Better for the environment - LED lighting is more efficient that traditional lighting, and therefore uses less energy to emit the same, or even more light (lumens). For example, a traditional E27 (Screw Cap) lamp or 60W could be replaced with an LED version that only uses 7W of energy.
• Longer Lasting - With some LED lighting options offering expected life expectancies of 50,000 hours, and as high as 100,000 hours, new lights can expect to last for many years after purchase. This is because LED lights do not use heat to emit light, and therefore don’t have components that can burn out after prolonged use.
• Save Money - Because LED lights use less energy, and last longer than traditional lighting options, LEDs can save you money too! Up to 80%!

Where can you use LED Lighting?

LED lighting is now the preferred option for lighting any environment, from homes, schools, offices, warehouses, factories, supermarkets and more. There is an LED option for every environment and project, and more and more options becoming available regularly, more efficient, longer lasting etc.

Example Cost Savings

Let’s have a look at some examples of the savings that can be made switching to LED lighting compared with traditional options, based on an energy cost of 28p/kwh (price taken from British Gas website April 2022).

1. A Standard Home

A standard home may use incandescent lamps in every room, let’s use 15 lamps across 7 rooms as an example, 4 hours of use per day. 

That’s 15 lamps at 60W, used for 4 hours per day, 365 days per year.

Using our energy calculator, this would cost £368.17 per year. Comparing this to an LED 7W equivalent, this would cost £42.95 per year!

A Saving of £325.22 per year!

2. A Standard Office

For this example, let’s use an office that has 22W T8 tube fittings, 4 tubes per fitting, 20 fittings installed in a false ceiling grid, in use for 10 hours per day.

That’s 20 fittings using 88W per fitting, in use for 10 hours per day.

Using our energy calculator, this would cost around £1760 per year to light. Comparing this to using LED 36W LED Panels, which would cost £720 per year.

A saving of £1040 per year!

To calculate your potential energy savings, you can use our handy calculator, which can be found here.

As you can see, the benefits of upgrading your existing lighting to energy saving LED equivalents are huge, not just financially, but environmentally too.