The Eco Benefits Of Installing LED Lighting In Your Home

The Eco Benefits Of Installing LED Lighting In Your Home

The expression is “a man’s home is his castle” which i believe is true, but with this castle comes great responsibility for paying the bills that come with that castle. One such bill is the dreaded electricity bill which always seems to be going up and up, one way to counter that is to have solar panels installed so you help generate electricity to power your house and get money back from your power supplier. Unfortunately this is an expensive solution to undertake but there are other ways to help save you money and be more friendly to the environment, one way is to install LED lights into your household.

LED’s or Light Emitting Diodes do not use as much electricity as a standard incandescent light bulb does. Think about how many light bulbs you have around your house and how many are on at anyone time I would suspect quite a few, but lets say you have 30 incandescent light bulbs and they are all 60 watts, and you have them on for one year the total kilowatts of electricity used will be 3285 KWh/yr. The LED alternative which will be only 6­8 watts will use 329 KWh/yr. As you can see that is a huge difference in the amount of electricity used over a period of a year. Now looking at the cost to run the incandescent light bulbs you will be looking at around $329 for the year, but the cost of running the LED’s is a much lower cost at around $33 for the year, as you can see there is a huge difference in running costs.

Its not just running costs that LED’s are better at its also the life span of the product as well, as the incandescent light bulb will have a lifespan of 1,200 hours which is the equivalent of 50 days (which may decrease over time due to being turned off and on again), now on the LED’s side they have a lifespan of 50,000 hours which is just over 5 and a half years (2,083 days).

As you can see from the two examples above the LED’s are much more environmentally friendly than the traditional light bulb, with less power being consumed to light them and having a much longer lifespan means you won't be replacing them as often as you would with a light bulb. Another advantage is that the LED’s are not made with mercury as mercury is very toxic to your health and the environment, also LED’s are made from fully recyclable material.

As LED’s are also not sensitive to low temperatures or humidity and that they are small, they are a fantastic way to put light into places where you need it most. Lets take the kitchen for example, if you use LED tape and attach the lights onto a cupboard above the counter you can have the light directly light up the worktop area where you prepare your food. This means you get the full benefit of the light in that area. Another example of using the LED tape would be to place them in your wardrobe so when you open them in the morning or evening you can see what items of clothing you have.

Another great feature of the LED lights is that they do not emit ultraviolet radiation which attracts mosquitoes, which i’m sure will be a delight those who live in areas with them.
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So in summary LED’s use less electricity than incandescent light bulbs, which in turn cost much less to run, have a much longer lifespan, do not have mercury in them, are recyclable, are not sensitive to low temperatures or humidity, don’t emit ultraviolet radiation, and can be placed into difficult areas easily for maximum benefit.

About the Author
This article was written by Simon King who is a lighting designer for InStyle LED Lighting.