It should come as no surprise that the average household spends at least 10 percent of its monthly electricity bill on powering lighting equipment. Therefore, switching to more efficient ones will be one of the easiest and fastest ways to reduce your power consumption, thereby saving your hard-earned money which can be put to other good uses.
In the current day and age, there are several different types of low-energy rated lighting equipment available on the market. These include LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes), CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lamps), Halogen bulbs and so on. But, the question that remains is, how do you choose one? The following tips will you in this daunting task of choosing the most efficient lighting equipment for your home.
Tips & Tricks To Remember When Planning To Purchase Energy Efficient Lighting
- LEDs Are Incredibly Efficient
LEDs are currently the latest technology that is being used in both lighting equipment as well as in display panels of TVs and monitors. Before choosing an LED lighting equipment with the help of an electrician in Malvern East services, you need to take a closer look at the colour temperature and CRI (Colour Rendering Index) of that specific LED. The following are their significance:
- Colour Rendering Index – It’s the measure of the ability of any light source for perfectly rendering colours. At least a CRI of 80 is recommended.
- Colour Temperature – This is measured in Kelvins and gives you an overall idea of what the light source will look like in real life. If the Kelvin number is higher, it means that the light source will be bluer. LEDs above the number of 4,000 Kelvins should be avoided unless you prefer your home with a cooler tone.
- Use The Lumen Count To Choose An LED
There are some LEDs in the market that claim to be very energy efficient. But, there’s no use in purchasing those if the LED doesn’t itself emit enough light to be able to be used daily, inside your home. Most people judge the light output with the help of watts, but that’s an inadequate measure. You should be looking for the lumen output.
For example, a 40-watt bulb will be emitting almost 360 lumens. Similarly, a 60-watt bulb will emit 615 lumens.
- Incandescent Light Is The Least Efficient Of All
When choosing lighting equipment with the help of an electrician in box hill services, it should be noted that incandescent bulbs create light source by heating a metal filament until it starts to glow. It’s an age-old technology that’s currently being phased out. However, some consumers do highly prefer the warm glow of incandescents to cooler-glow of LEDs.
Even though these bulbs are least expensive to purchase, they’ll be more expensive to operate due to their inefficiency and lesser life-span.
- Xenon And Halogen Lights Are More Efficient Than Incandescent, But Less Than LED
Halogen and Xenon bulbs are created by introducing a particular type of halogen gas (Chlorine, Fluorine, Bromine and the likes) or xenon gas into the body of an incandescent bulb. By doing this, the rated life of the bulb is therefore increased.
It has been rated that a typical halogen bulb will have a rated life of almost 2,000 hours, while a typical xenon bulb will have rated life around 10,000 hours. Such rated hours are much greater than regular incandescent bulbs. Moreover, you’ll have the option to install a dimmer, as these halogen and xenon bulbs are dimmable.
In general, halogen light is cooler in appearance than xenon light and therefore often described as white and crisp.
