Finding the right LED ceiling light for your home can be a daunting task but it’s essential to get it right first time in order to create the perfect balance between style, function and ambience. Ceiling lights using LED technology are perfectly suitable for your living room, dining room, kitchen or bedroom. In fact every room in your house could benefit from a cheap to run energy efficient LED ceiling fitting, whatever the style of room or ceiling height.
This type of illumination looks good, is economical to run and has the advantage of using up to 90% less energy which means you save money in the process. If you are replacing tired, old or worn out lights, the savings you make will go some way towards the cost and in some cases pay for them in full over time.
This is a relatively new way of lighting your home and there are many things to consider when making your choice. Our advisors at Universal Lighting Services are here to help you with advice and guidance so that you can illuminate your space in style and on budget. Just give us a call on 0151 650 2138 to discuss any aspect of LED ceiling lighting and a member of our team will be happy to advise you.
Choosing the style of LED lights for your ceiling
Whether you have a stately home, terraced house, suburban semi or detached house you can use these LED ceiling lights to good effect. They are available in all styles and types, including pendants, flush and semi flush in styles ranging from ultra-modern to traditional. There are a number of things that you need to consider when choosing one of these fittings.
How Much Light
We have all got used to dealing with the amount of light given in watts, which is in fact the amount of energy consumed and has nothing to do with illumination. The level of illumination is generally measured in lumens, so all of the fittings in this section give their output in lumens. As a general guide, a 60w incandescent gives around 700 lumens whilst the old style 100w gave around 900, so that’s somewhere to start.
Colour Temperature
Colour temperature is the most important aspect of your choice. This temperature is measured on the Kelvin scale and ranges from 800 – 20000 but for our purposes we are only interested in the 1800 – 6000 range. Get this wrong and you won’t be happy with your choice of ceiling light no matter how great the LED looks. The old style incandescent generated light by running electricity through fine wires that glowed white hot. This colour temperature is 2700k and known as warm white. The higher the number, the whiter the light until you get over 4500k when the light begins to turn blue. A full explanation about colour temperature can be found by following this link to our main LED lights page.
Deciding on the type of LED Ceiling Light
You have now chosen the correct fitting to give you the right level of illumination in a style that’s in keeping with your decor, so you now need to decide on the type. They are divided into three main categories:
- Dedicated non replaceable LED
- Dedicated replaceable LED
- Fitted with LED lamps
All available in dimmable and non-dimmable versions.
The dedicated non replaceable LED types are fitted with a driver that converts the 240v AC to 12 or 24v DC and is used to drive the LED modules that are typically a circuit board module fitted with a number of LED’s. When the module fails the fitting is spent and must be disposed of. This sounds wasteful but with a lifetime of up-to 50,000 hours this could be 20 years down the line.
The dedicated replaceable LED types are also fitted with a driver but the module can be replaced at the end of its life.
Those fitted with LED lamps are the simplest of all. They contain no driver and the lamps can simply be changed when they fail. Any ceiling fixture can be LED, even existing ones by just changing the lamps. If that’s what you want to do, then you need to take a look at our LED bulbs information and our energy saving guide.
This brief guide is designed to assist you in making an informed choice so that you are happy with your LED ceiling light as it is fitted. Please contact us on 0151 650 2138 with any questions you may have prior to any purchase so that we may assist you.
