Table of Contents
Lighting plays an important part in the aesthetics and overall functionality of a living space since it not just alleviates the look of a house but is also an integral part in keeping the property safe and secure.
Lighting makes around 20% of the average electricity bill in households in the UK and, with surges in electricity prices, it is important to opt for energy-efficient lighting that not only helps lower electricity bills but also plays a huge part in reducing carbon emissions.
Traditional light bulbs, also called incandescent light bulbs, were invented more than 100 years ago and are extremely inefficient converting only 5% of the used energy into visible light.
They, along with other high energy-consuming light bulbs, are being taken off the market in favour of more energy-efficient alternatives.
There have been three generations of energy-efficient light bulbs: halogen bulbs, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), with each one more reliable and efficient than its predecessor.
Let’s look at how LEDs and halogen bulbs are different from each other and which is a better option when it comes to house lighting:
LED stands for Light Emitting Diode and is one of the most energy-efficient and environment-friendly lighting technologies available in the market today.
It has the potential to change the future of lighting in the UK with more homes and businesses switching from traditional forms of lighting to LEDs.
LED lights differ from traditional bulbs in the way that they produce light. They are made up of a solid material called a semiconductor which is encased in translucent plastic or glass.
When electricity is passed through the semiconductor, which is made up of a positively and negatively charged component, it activates the flow of electrons from the negative to the positive layer, creating light in the process.
Halogens are an extension of incandescent light bulbs and use filament technology and halogen gas to produce light.
A tungsten filament sits inside the halogen bulb that begins to glow when electricity is supplied to it. The brightness and whiteness of the bulb are dependent on the amount of energy produced by the filament.
The difference between a halogen and incandescent bulb is the amount of heat emission and the presence of halogen gas.
With halogens, more electricity is converted into light than with an incandescent bulb making them slightly more efficient than their predecessors.
Also, the presence of halogen gas prevents black spots from appearing on the bulb, as it happens with incandescent bulbs, and it helps re-coats the filament with tungsten vapours that evaporate when the filament glows, substantially increasing the number of hours that a halogen bulb can work for.
However, despite them being a step-up from traditional incandescent lights, they are still highly inefficient and are being phased out of the market to promote efficiency and sustainability.
Halogens have become obsolete in the UK following a ban made by the European Union in 2018, with companies not being allowed to manufacture new inefficient halogen lights and homeowners expected to replace their existing halogen lights with energy-efficient alternatives as soon as the former expires.
Although halogen lights are much better than traditional incandescent lights, they don’t stand a chance against energy-efficient and environment-friendly LED lights.
When choosing the perfect lighting for your home, LED lights are a far better choice than halogen lights, and here’s why:
Halogen bulbs consume far more electricity to produce light, leading to substantial energy bills and a burden on the grid to produce more electricity to accommodate the demand.
LED lights, on the other hand, use only a fraction of the power – 85% less power used by halogens to be precise – leading to enormous savings each month.
You can easily replace a 50-watt halogen bulb with a 7.5-watt LED and get the same level of brightness coupled with lower energy bills.
At a time when environmental responsibility is on top priority the world over, LEDs provide an environment-friendly alternative to other forms of lighting.
As discussed above, since LEDs use much less energy to produce light, it not just helps with energy savings but also results in reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to that, LED lights contain no hazardous materials, do not require specialist disposal, are 100% recyclable, and have essentially zero UV emissions.
When you look at the initial costs, an LED bulb is more expensive than a halogen light, although that gap is shrinking as LED technology becomes more advanced and the demand increases.
However, when you look at the running costs, which is calculated by how many Watts it takes to light a bulb, an LED is far more economical using around 7 to 20 Watts per hour as compared to halogens using around 35 to 500 Watts an hour to emit the same amount of light.
The annual running cost of a typical 700+ lumen LED bulb is around £1.71, compared to £2.04 for CFLs, and £8.42 for halogen bulbs, making LED bulbs the clear winner when it comes to long-term savings and energy efficiency.
Although halogen lights last longer than their older counterparts, they are nothing when compared to the advanced LED light. The average life of an LED bulb is around 50,000 to 60,000 hours compared to a halogen’s 1,200 hours.
An LED light lasts about 41 times longer than a halogen light which means you wouldn’t have to replace your LED bulbs for a good 10 years.
Unlike a halogen bulb that produces light by heating its filament, LED bulbs turn electromagnetic energy into light which allows them to operate at a much lower temperature.
Halogen bulbs don’t just burn brightly but also produce a lot of heat causing nasty burns when touched and serious problems in hotter climates with a much higher risk of fires, while also adding to the environment’s temperature.
LED bulbs produce 80% less heat than halogen lights and are a much safer option when installing them to light up your home. They are also never hot enough to cause burns or ignite any material that may come into contact with them.
LEDs are much more durable than halogen bulbs which are made from glass and quartz and can easily be broken if they are dropped or smashed.
While the quartz used in halogen bulbs give them more durability than incandescent bulbs, LEDs are far more reliable and durable.
LEDs are made from a solid semiconductor, reducing the chances of them getting easily broken. Also, since there is little or no use of glass, there is a reduced risk of someone stepping on a stray shard and getting injured.
Since halogens burn much hotter than LED lights, they produce a bright white light as compared to LED lights that offer a variety of colour temperatures for different lighting conditions.
Most LED bulbs are directional and concentrate most of their light output within a specific angle. This feature allows them to be the perfect choice for general, task, and accent lighting, and also imitate the look and feel of a traditional light bulb when need be.
LED lights come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can be manufactured according to any specifications. Their compact design allows them to be included in everything ranging from chandeliers to security lights and mobile phones.
They can easily be installed in any corner of the house without having to make any major changes to the surrounding whereas halogen lights are much less adaptable and more constrained due to their bulb design.
Now that it has been settled that LED lights are the far better option when it comes to energy efficiency, durability, reliability, longevity, and safety, you need to make sure you choose the best LED lights for your home.
Here are a few things that you need to consider when installing new LED lights or replacing existing less efficient lights with them:
As mentioned above, LED lights are highly versatile and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can be easily installed as new fixtures and also retrofitted to existing ones to be used both outdoors and indoors as general lights, spotlights, dimmable lights, and accent lights.
You can easily replace a halogen bulb with an LED light, regardless of the fitting; you just need to get the right size, fitting, and cap type. There are some instances, however, when you would require extra drivers such as when using MR16, MR11 and G4 spotlight bulbs.
Has it ever happened with you that you bought a light for your house and had been let down by the level of brightness it gave out? Probably yes, and the reason for that happening is that you may have bought a bulb with a very low lumen value.
What are lumens? They are a measure of knowing how bright the LED bulb will be. Instead of using Watts to determine the brightness of an LED light, as is done with traditional bulbs, it is best to use lumens.
The reason being that Watts measure power consumption rather than brightness and, since LED bulbs use fewer Watts, it is best to look at the lumen value when choosing how bright you want the light to be.
The higher the number of lumens, the brighter the light is produced. To get a rough idea, 1500 to 3000 lumens might be required for an average-sized living room, whereas 400 lumens would be suitable for a table lamp.
The colour of a light is measured in Kelvins and is a huge deciding factor when choosing the right LED bulb for your home. Imagine wanting a nice and warm ambience for your living room only to find that the bulb you purchased gives off a stark white or blueish light.
The colour of the light is determined by its temperature on the Kelvin scale ranging from 2000K-6500K, with lower numbers meaning a warmer light and higher numbers meaning a cooler one.
Another important factor is the colour rendering index (CRI) of an LED bulb which will determine how well a bulb will illuminate a chosen colour. Two LED bulbs can have the same temperature on the Kelvin scale and yet show colours differently due to their CRI.
LED bulbs with a higher CRI will show colours more accurately than those with a lower CSI. You can find all three: lumen value, temperature, and CSI on the bulb’s packaging, making it easier for you to choose the most appropriate bulb for your home.
In addition to using LED lights for new installations and replacing existing fittings, there are other very simple ways in which you can increase the energy efficiency of your house electrics and lower your electricity bills:
Efficient home lighting is a great way to reduce your energy consumption to save money on your bills and reduce your carbon footprint.
We, at Calder Electrical, provide an easy and effective way of achieving this by both upgrading to and installing new LED lighting.
We can offer fittings with 3 to 5+ year warranties that will not only reduce energy costs but also make your homes brighter. We can also provide a forecasted energy calculation so you can see what your energy bills and savings will look like.
We can survey your home and create a lighting design to see if we can not only reduce the number of light fittings but also make the area reach a lighting level suitable for use.
We can also incorporate motion detectors so that lighting in areas that are low usage is only switched on when someone enters them.
We can give you an energy calculation to show your current lighting costs and the estimated costs by upgrading to LED lighting so that you can see how much you will save, normally aiming for a 40% saving.
If you are undertaking a new installation, we can help you create a lighting design suitable for the house layout and intended usage.
We provide a high and efficient level of LED installation services guaranteed to meet the current wiring regulations BS7671.
Contact us here or call us on 0800 612 3001 to talk to our LED lighting experts right away!
Photo by Evan Smogor on Unsplash
Lighting plays an important part in the aesthetics and overall functionality of a living space since it not just alleviates the look of a house but is also an integral part in keeping the property safe and secure.
Lighting makes around 20% of the average electricity bill in households in the UK and, with surges in electricity prices, it is important to opt for energy-efficient lighting that not only helps lower electricity bills but also plays a huge part in reducing carbon emissions.
Traditional light bulbs, also called incandescent light bulbs, were invented more than 100 years ago and are extremely inefficient converting only 5% of the used energy into visible light.
They, along with other high energy-consuming light bulbs, are being taken off the market in favour of more energy-efficient alternatives.
There have been three generations of energy-efficient light bulbs: halogen bulbs, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), with each one more reliable and efficient than its predecessor.
Let’s look at how LEDs and halogen bulbs are different from each other and which is a better option when it comes to house lighting:
LED stands for Light Emitting Diode and is one of the most energy-efficient and environment-friendly lighting technologies available in the market today.
It has the potential to change the future of lighting in the UK with more homes and businesses switching from traditional forms of lighting to LEDs.
LED lights differ from traditional bulbs in the way that they produce light. They are made up of a solid material called a semiconductor which is encased in translucent plastic or glass.
When electricity is passed through the semiconductor, which is made up of a positively and negatively charged component, it activates the flow of electrons from the negative to the positive layer, creating light in the process.
Halogens are an extension of incandescent light bulbs and use filament technology and halogen gas to produce light.
A tungsten filament sits inside the halogen bulb that begins to glow when electricity is supplied to it. The brightness and whiteness of the bulb are dependent on the amount of energy produced by the filament.
The difference between a halogen and incandescent bulb is the amount of heat emission and the presence of halogen gas.
With halogens, more electricity is converted into light than with an incandescent bulb making them slightly more efficient than their predecessors.
Also, the presence of halogen gas prevents black spots from appearing on the bulb, as it happens with incandescent bulbs, and it helps re-coats the filament with tungsten vapours that evaporate when the filament glows, substantially increasing the number of hours that a halogen bulb can work for.
However, despite them being a step-up from traditional incandescent lights, they are still highly inefficient and are being phased out of the market to promote efficiency and sustainability.
Halogens have become obsolete in the UK following a ban made by the European Union in 2018, with companies not being allowed to manufacture new inefficient halogen lights and homeowners expected to replace their existing halogen lights with energy-efficient alternatives as soon as the former expires.
Although halogen lights are much better than traditional incandescent lights, they don’t stand a chance against energy-efficient and environment-friendly LED lights.
When choosing the perfect lighting for your home, LED lights are a far better choice than halogen lights, and here’s why:
Halogen bulbs consume far more electricity to produce light, leading to substantial energy bills and a burden on the grid to produce more electricity to accommodate the demand.
LED lights, on the other hand, use only a fraction of the power – 85% less power used by halogens to be precise – leading to enormous savings each month.
You can easily replace a 50-watt halogen bulb with a 7.5-watt LED and get the same level of brightness coupled with lower energy bills.
At a time when environmental responsibility is on top priority the world over, LEDs provide an environment-friendly alternative to other forms of lighting.
As discussed above, since LEDs use much less energy to produce light, it not just helps with energy savings but also results in reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to that, LED lights contain no hazardous materials, do not require specialist disposal, are 100% recyclable, and have essentially zero UV emissions.
When you look at the initial costs, an LED bulb is more expensive than a halogen light, although that gap is shrinking as LED technology becomes more advanced and the demand increases.
However, when you look at the running costs, which is calculated by how many Watts it takes to light a bulb, an LED is far more economical using around 7 to 20 Watts per hour as compared to halogens using around 35 to 500 Watts an hour to emit the same amount of light.
The annual running cost of a typical 700+ lumen LED bulb is around £1.71, compared to £2.04 for CFLs, and £8.42 for halogen bulbs, making LED bulbs the clear winner when it comes to long-term savings and energy efficiency.
Although halogen lights last longer than their older counterparts, they are nothing when compared to the advanced LED light. The average life of an LED bulb is around 50,000 to 60,000 hours compared to a halogen’s 1,200 hours.
An LED light lasts about 41 times longer than a halogen light which means you wouldn’t have to replace your LED bulbs for a good 10 years.
Unlike a halogen bulb that produces light by heating its filament, LED bulbs turn electromagnetic energy into light which allows them to operate at a much lower temperature.
Halogen bulbs don’t just burn brightly but also produce a lot of heat causing nasty burns when touched and serious problems in hotter climates with a much higher risk of fires, while also adding to the environment’s temperature.
LED bulbs produce 80% less heat than halogen lights and are a much safer option when installing them to light up your home. They are also never hot enough to cause burns or ignite any material that may come into contact with them.
LEDs are much more durable than halogen bulbs which are made from glass and quartz and can easily be broken if they are dropped or smashed.
While the quartz used in halogen bulbs give them more durability than incandescent bulbs, LEDs are far more reliable and durable.
LEDs are made from a solid semiconductor, reducing the chances of them getting easily broken. Also, since there is little or no use of glass, there is a reduced risk of someone stepping on a stray shard and getting injured.
Since halogens burn much hotter than LED lights, they produce a bright white light as compared to LED lights that offer a variety of colour temperatures for different lighting conditions.
Most LED bulbs are directional and concentrate most of their light output within a specific angle. This feature allows them to be the perfect choice for general, task, and accent lighting, and also imitate the look and feel of a traditional light bulb when need be.
LED lights come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can be manufactured according to any specifications. Their compact design allows them to be included in everything ranging from chandeliers to security lights and mobile phones.
They can easily be installed in any corner of the house without having to make any major changes to the surrounding whereas halogen lights are much less adaptable and more constrained due to their bulb design.
Now that it has been settled that LED lights are the far better option when it comes to energy efficiency, durability, reliability, longevity, and safety, you need to make sure you choose the best LED lights for your home.
Here are a few things that you need to consider when installing new LED lights or replacing existing less efficient lights with them:
As mentioned above, LED lights are highly versatile and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can be easily installed as new fixtures and also retrofitted to existing ones to be used both outdoors and indoors as general lights, spotlights, dimmable lights, and accent lights.
You can easily replace a halogen bulb with an LED light, regardless of the fitting; you just need to get the right size, fitting, and cap type. There are some instances, however, when you would require extra drivers such as when using MR16, MR11 and G4 spotlight bulbs.
Has it ever happened with you that you bought a light for your house and had been let down by the level of brightness it gave out? Probably yes, and the reason for that happening is that you may have bought a bulb with a very low lumen value.
What are lumens? They are a measure of knowing how bright the LED bulb will be. Instead of using Watts to determine the brightness of an LED light, as is done with traditional bulbs, it is best to use lumens.
The reason being that Watts measure power consumption rather than brightness and, since LED bulbs use fewer Watts, it is best to look at the lumen value when choosing how bright you want the light to be.
The higher the number of lumens, the brighter the light is produced. To get a rough idea, 1500 to 3000 lumens might be required for an average-sized living room, whereas 400 lumens would be suitable for a table lamp.
The colour of a light is measured in Kelvins and is a huge deciding factor when choosing the right LED bulb for your home. Imagine wanting a nice and warm ambience for your living room only to find that the bulb you purchased gives off a stark white or blueish light.
The colour of the light is determined by its temperature on the Kelvin scale ranging from 2000K-6500K, with lower numbers meaning a warmer light and higher numbers meaning a cooler one.
Another important factor is the colour rendering index (CRI) of an LED bulb which will determine how well a bulb will illuminate a chosen colour. Two LED bulbs can have the same temperature on the Kelvin scale and yet show colours differently due to their CRI.
LED bulbs with a higher CRI will show colours more accurately than those with a lower CSI. You can find all three: lumen value, temperature, and CSI on the bulb’s packaging, making it easier for you to choose the most appropriate bulb for your home.
In addition to using LED lights for new installations and replacing existing fittings, there are other very simple ways in which you can increase the energy efficiency of your house electrics and lower your electricity bills:
Efficient home lighting is a great way to reduce your energy consumption to save money on your bills and reduce your carbon footprint.
We, at Calder Electrical, provide an easy and effective way of achieving this by both upgrading to and installing new LED lighting.
We can offer fittings with 3 to 5+ year warranties that will not only reduce energy costs but also make your homes brighter. We can also provide a forecasted energy calculation so you can see what your energy bills and savings will look like.
We can survey your home and create a lighting design to see if we can not only reduce the number of light fittings but also make the area reach a lighting level suitable for use.
We can also incorporate motion detectors so that lighting in areas that are low usage is only switched on when someone enters them.
We can give you an energy calculation to show your current lighting costs and the estimated costs by upgrading to LED lighting so that you can see how much you will save, normally aiming for a 40% saving.
If you are undertaking a new installation, we can help you create a lighting design suitable for the house layout and intended usage.
We provide a high and efficient level of LED installation services guaranteed to meet the current wiring regulations BS7671.
Contact us here or call us on 0800 612 3001 to talk to our LED lighting experts right away!
Photo by Evan Smogor on Unsplash
