What are the different types of LED lighting?

Over the last ten years LED lighting has developed which means that many companies and home owners are trying to consider it as an economical and green way of lighting a property that may help them to save the energy. The problem in the past has been that the bulbs were not producing enough light for everyday use and were generally considered to be too expensive. Both these problems have now largely been solved and there are a variety of different types of LED lighting that homes and offices can now choose from.

Types of LED Bulb

In the recent past, LED lighting used to be fairly limited with few designs to choose from. With greater advances in the technology, you can now get a range of styles including candles, golf balls, GLS, reflectors, spotlights and tubes. The cost too is now comparable with other bulbs and can provide significant savings in electricity bills.

LED Colour

The light emitted by normal LED bulbs comes in three different varieties which are:

• Warm white which is used in most homes and is similar to current halogen bulbs. (2700K to 3500K)
• Cool white is a similar colour to fluorescent tubes such as those you find in shops and offices. (5000K to 6500K)
• Daylight colour is a stark white light and has a hint of blue to it, used mainly for highlighting real colour.

Dimmer Switches

As with other light bulbs you can use a dimmer switch with LED lighting. The caveat to this is that your normal dimmer switch that may have worked with an incandescent bulb won’t work with LED lighting and will have to be replaced.

LED Lighting Tubes

LED lighting tubes are designed to replace fluorescent tubes and in some cases can be just simple drop in replacements. Other tube designs will need rewiring and new ballast. These generally work by providing a series of smaller LED lights along the length of the tube and are available in most sizes that you would normally expect.

SMD LED

SMD stands for Surface Mounted Device and they are one of the new generations of LED lighting. Bulbs contain SMD chips that add the extra brightness that has made it a more viable choice for both households and offices.

COB LED

COB stands for Chip on Board which are another new generation of LED technology and provides a denser amount of light compared to SMD and great optics because you get a consistent beam of controlled light. It provides a better lumen to watt ratio which means that they are considered highly efficient.

Why We Now Use Lumens

Wattage used to be the way that we judged the brightness of a bulb which was fine when we just had incandescent bulbs. The trouble is that different bulbs need different amounts of electricity to produce the same amount of light. We know talk in terms of lumens which is a distinct measure of the light produced – the higher the value the brighter the bulb.

Below is a comparison of different bulbs and their value in lumens.

There’s no doubt that LED lighting is far more efficient at converting watts to light and some manufacturers say that there are 90% savings over the old fashioned incandescent bulbs. LED technology is one of the most exciting developments in green energy over the last few years and research is starting to develop more efficient and cheaper bulbs that can make a real difference to people’s bills in the future.

Ref: https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/main/led-lighting-information/types-of-led-lighting/