You can probably find as many Buyer’s Guide for LED Lighting and recommendations for LED lights as you can find the lights themselves. Those guides will all provide countless suggestions for your LED purchases and Factory Direct LED, the leading online source for LED lights bulbs, fixtures, and accessories, sells a majority of the LED products that those guides will direct you to at the best available prices. If you are not yet convinced of the value of adopting or transitioning to LED lighting, this Buyer’s Guide for LED Lighting from Factory Direct LED will help you to take the final steps toward that decision.
LED’s are solid-state lighting technology that convert a majority of input electrical energy into light with little or no energy dissipation through heat.
Incandescent and fluorescent bulbs generate light by passing electrical current through filaments or gasses. Those filaments and gasses convert typically less than ten percent of electrical energy input into light, with the balance of energy input being wasted as heat. The circuitry and substrates in LED fixtures will get warm, but those fixtures generate substantially more light per unit of energy input than any incandescent or fluorescent fixtures. This efficiency saves you money through lower operating and maintenance costs over the life of the LED bulb, which in almost every case will be substantially longer than the lifespan of an incandescent or fluorescent fixture. Thus, moving to LED’s means that you are using advanced lighting technology that will cost you less to operate.
LED lighting is an integral part of a room’s design.
Regular lighting often does little more than highlight the design features of a space, such as colors, fabric textures, and details of furnishings. LED lighting is more likely to be a key element of the space’s design. LED’s are available in a range of lighting temperatures, from bright and cool, to subtle and warm. You can use variable-colored LEDs to change the entire look and feel of a space and to adapt the same space to different uses. Rather than being an afterthought in a design process, LED lighting expands the flexibility of any design.
Take some time to understand LED lighting labels.
You probably chose incandescent or fluorescent bulbs solely as a function of their wattage ratings, and of whether they coincided with the physical size and rating of the light fixture in which they would be installed. Labels on LED bulbs include more information to help us make the right choice. Look for the bulb’s “lumen” rating, which tells you how much illumination the bulb will deliver relative to its wattage input. Check out its anticipated lifespan and estimated operating cost to determine how long it will last and how much you can expect to spend (and save) on electricity costs.
You might need different dimmers.
Because LED’s are an advanced technology, the dimmer switches that will work best with LED bulbs are similarly advanced. If you will want to control light levels in a space that is lit by LEDs, select LED bulbs that are designed to be dimmed and use dimmer switches that match their technology.
