Prior to LED’s, lighting systems would account for up to 25% of the average home energy budget. Your typical household light bulb 10 years ago would be a 60 Watt (60W). Today, LED’s produce a greater amount of light (called lumens), but using as little as 9W.
Yes, you read that correctly – LED lights LOSE less energy than any other lighting system. Older light bulbs, such as halogen downlights, generate a huge amount of heat in the process of generating light, and heat is a form of energy usage. Obviously heat isn’t the desired outcome of a light, so that energy is simply being wasted. Not only is the energy being wasted, but the extra heat is unnecessarily heating your house, which means additional cooling requirements – which means additional energy costs!
Not only do LED’s produce a greater amount of lumens than halogen or CFL lighting systems, they also produce a far wider spread of light. An added beauty of new LED light fittings is that they have an in-built switch where you can choose from 3 desired ‘warmths’ of the light produced – warm (a slight yellow tinge, most commonly used in bedrooms), daylight (a white colour, often used in kitchens and bathrooms) and cool (a cold blue colour, only really suitable for medical facilities)