More and more, Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Roanoke, Richmond and Charlottesville is being asked about LED lighting in lieu of traditional landscape lighting which has historically been completed with quartz halogen bulbs.
LED offers several advantages, mostly dealing with energy consumption and longer life LEDs as compared to halogen bulbs. The LEDs which we are using are, for the most part, only using 20-30% of the energy required by halogen bulbs.. As examples, we are using 3 watt LEDs as compared to 20 watt quartz halogen. And, 5 or 6 watt LEDs versus 35 watt quartz halogen. As far as the average life of the LEDs, most LEDs are rated for between 30,000 – 50,000 hour average life versus a typical 4,000 hour average life halogen bulb.
What most consumers don’t understand is that all LEDs are not created equal. Differences exist from manufacturer to manufacturer. These differences pertain to the color of the light output, the amount of illumination produced by the LED (or what we would call lumen output or lumens per watt), the degree spread and beam length of the light produced by the LED, which many times is impacted by the optics used in the manufacturing process, as well as the method or quality of construction of the LED and how well the heat sink protects the driver of the LED. A poorly designed LED will have a much shorter life compared to a well-designed LED due to the heat sink, which disperses the heat away from the driver. We will write about each of these issues in future blogs so stay tuned.
For now, if you are in the market for LED landscape lighting, work with a true lighting design professional who is particular about creating a natural effect and who truly understands the differences from one LED to another. Or if you are a do-it-yourselfer, do your homework very carefully to make sure you are using only high quality materials that will produce the desired lighting effect.
