The LED or Light Emitting Diode is an extremely popular form of light generating bulbs or strips. Today, the LED lighting Solution replaces the incandescent bulb in every home and business. The LED is 80% more efficient, last thirteen times longer, and is cooler to the touch. It’s brightness or light is measured in lumens. LED bulbs are made in traditional bulb shapes, CAN shaped for recessed fixtures, flood, globe, candle, tube, track, vintage, and strip lights.
LED Compared to Fluorescent and Halogen
The LED lasts three times longer than fluorescent lights making it more cost-efficient form of lighting for most homes and offices. Leds are even replacing halogen bulbs.
Wattage to Lumens Conversion
If your lamp takes a regular incandescent light bulb, you can find a replacement bulb in an LED bulb. When replacing your incandescent light bulbs look at the chart below to compare lumens to watts:
25 Watts compares to 250 lumens
40 Watts compares to 450 lumens
60 Watts compares to 800 lumens
100 Watts compares to 1600 lumens
The Required Lumens Per Task
LED lighting Solutions save money and generate more than enough light for any room’s lighting needs or any task. Bulbs in task lamps sitting on side tables or desks can be fitted with the appropriate bulbs to illuminate the necessary area. Generally, close tasks like reading require the user to use 450 lumens. To perform intricate drafting or closeup repairs while working with delicate parts a LED bulb of 800 to 1100 lumens may be needed. In these instances, a flexible neck may be a good detail to include in your task lamp to focus where the light is directed.
Uses for Strip Lighting
LED strip lights are surface mounted on a flexible circuit board. These strip lights have gone from simply decorative to very useful. Now strip lights not only form backlighting, decorative lighting, and accent lighting, they also are used as task lighting, growing plants, and as replacement lighting for fluorescent and halogen lights.
Powering Strip Lighting
Strip or ribbon lights are powered by double A batteries, 3.7-volt rechargeable batteries, or DC 12-volt batteries. DC 12-volt strip lights can also be hardwired.
LED is an invention of a General Electric consulting engineer named Nick Holonyack. He invented this wondrous creation in 1962. At the time the LED had a substrate composed of gallium arsenide phosphide. Today, that substrate is composed of sapphire with some substrate composed of silicon carbide.