Buying your LED bulb – How to make the right choice

Unsure what is the right choice when buying your new LED bulb?
Here at Lamps and Lights we have been busy working on collating all the information required for how to choose the right LED lamp bulb. When Homes and Gardens magazine requested our contribution to their Lighting Feature Special to help answer all those LED queries we decided to help make your life easier too, here’s all the info.

With the latest additions in the new dimmable filament LED range now available from our Webshop it is a good time to consider switching from your old incandescent bulb to these cost effective, seriously stylish LED bulbs. With a lifespan ranging from 15,000 hours to a whopping 25,000 hours and an average of 4 Watts energy consumption, they truly are an ultra-low energy bulb.

You no longer need to compromise on design as with many of the CFL bulbs; the pleasingly warm glow from an incandescent filament is now fully replicated in these new filament LEDs and nearly all are now fully dimmable

So what do you need to know before choosing your LED comparison?

Well it’s all about the Lumens, not Watts. Previously you chose your bulb brightness by the level of Watts i.e a 40, 60 or 100 watt bulb.
But, wattage is not actually the measure of a bulb’s brightness, but is its energy usage. There is then, a direct correlation between watts and the bulb’s brightness in incandescent bulbs but not with an ultra low consumption 4 Watt LED bulb.

LEDs work differently and so the way in which we measure the brightness is completely different. As LEDs use far less energy, the amount of watts used is no longer an indicator as to the brightness of the bulb.

Sadly there is no exact conversion from Watts to LEDs for example, a traditional 60 watt incandescent bulb can compare to anywhere between 2 and 12 watts in a LED bulb, but don’t panic, it’s just a case of knowing your required Lumen rating.

Lumens are the ‘brightness’ measurement provided by a light bulb, and this is what you need to look for when choosing your new LED.
Our comparison guide is an approximation of Watts to Lumens for our bulbs. An old 40 watt bulb would on average be between 300 to 500 Lumens. (Remember, with new technology being regularly released, energy efficiency is constantly improving, so we will maintain the current information on our website).

So, now we know where previously we looked at a 40 watt incandescent bulb we may now choose perhaps a 4 watt LED, we may also want to choose our bulb based on the colour emitted.

This is referred to as ‘colour temperature’ and is measured in Kelvins – with the higher the number, the whiter and cooler the light given off i.e. anything under 4000K tends to produce a warmer, more gently light and anything over produces a cooler, brighter white light mostly used for task areas such as kitchens and work areas.
The average of an old style incandescent was between 2,700 and 3,500 Kelvin. So if colour rendering is your deciding factor then choose your LED bulb by its Kelvin rating.

So what happens when you have a multi-ceiling plate with a collection of new dimmable LED bulbs?

Dimmer switches have a minimum and maximum rating (measured in Watts). LED loading cannot however be calculated in the same way as a traditional incandescent or halogen bulb.
A good rule of thumb to apply, (one that is used by most manufacturers) is to take the maximum rating of the dimmer switch and divide it by 10. For example, a dimmer switch which has a maximum rating of 200W if you apply the rule of thumb this translates to 20W in LEDs and therefore will run x5 of our 4W dimmable vintage LED light bulbs.

So now you know all you need to about the specs, so next choose your style, size and fitting. Our range is growing fast from mini globes and candles, standard sized traditional bulbs to medium globes, vintage squirrels and large globes ALL available in the new stylish dimmable filament LEDs PLUS now are our fantastic new enormous GIANT LED BULBS, just perfect for that statement piece, but be warned, there’s no subtlety here!!!

So, whether you’re designing your lighting for a large venue, office space or in the home, you can be sure we will have something for you!www.lampsandlights.co.uk