By Bob Kelly
Over the past several years, LED landscape lighting has become the predominant choice for most landscape lighting designers and contractors, including Elegant Custom Images. Three qualities that make LED bulbs so popular are luminosity, light quality and durability. Here are a few other facts about outdoor LED lights that you may not know:
Facts about Outdoor LED Lights
1. A light-emitting diode, or LED, uses a semiconductor to convert electricity into light. According to Energy.gov, today’s LED bulbs can be six-seven times more energy efficient than conventional incandescent lights and cut energy use by more than 80 percent. That means when you use LED bulbs, you will save up to 25% of the cost to light up your home and property.
At Elegant Custom Images, we use chips that are made in the USA and drivers that are made in the USA. The fixtures for our LED lights are also top quality, high end brass, and made in the USA. The reason why we opted to use American-made products is because the customer service, tech service, and product knowledge is located here, not offshore. The chips are made by Cree Mfg. and the drivers are made by National Semiconductor. These folks are the world leaders in quality and efficiency in the LED market. When it comes to LEDs, efficiency matters. If you can get a 7 watt LED to perform better than an 11 watt LED, it is more efficient, saves more for our customer, and will last longer over the long haul because both would be rated comparable to a 50 watt halogen bulb in lumens.
2. Outdoor LED bulbs are rated according to how many hours of light they provide. At Elegant Custom Images, we use 30,000 hour rated LED lights in our outdoor landscape lighting fixtures. They pay for themselves in three years, and are guaranteed for five years. That means your lights will last 10-30 times longer than traditional light bulbs, eliminating the need for yearly bulb replacement.
3. LEDs are cooler than incandescent bulbs, which release 90 percent of their energy as heat. LED bulbs use energy far more efficiently, with little wasted heat. Plus, there’s no risk of getting burned if LED lights are touched by children or pets.
4. Outdoor LEDs come in various colors such as warm white, which is most commonly used, standard white and cool white. We also use an LED bulb with a slight blue tint which is perfect for special effects or underwater.
5. LEDs don’t have delicate filaments like conventional incandescent bulbs do. As a result, LEDs aren’t susceptible to damage from the movement of fixtures during maintenance or by rough landscape maintenance crews.
6. LED bulbs don’t attract bugs. Moths, mosquitoes and other insects are attracted to ultraviolet light, but they should fly right past outdoor LED bulbs because most don’t give off this type of light.
7. LEDs are environmentally friendly. Unlike compact fluorescent lights, LED bulbs contain no mercury, and they have a much smaller environmental impact over incandescent bulbs.
8. According to Energy.gov, about 49 million LEDs were installed in the U.S. in 2012, saving about $675 million in annual energy costs. It’s estimated that the U.S. could save $250 billion in energy costs, reduce electricity consumption for lighting by nearly half, and avoid 1,800 million metric tons of carbon emissions by switching entirely to LED lights over the next two decades.
Read about the 3 Tips for Hiring a Landscape Lighting Contractor.
If you’d like more information about LED lighting, and how it can enhance your property in Winter Park or throughout Central Florida, contact Elegant Custom Images today at (321) 352-4267.
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