FAQS

What is the typical life expectancy of an LED light fitting?Most high quality LED lamps range between 30,000.00 and 50,000.00 hrs dependant of the environment that they operate in. To put this into perspective, 30,000.00 hrs at 8 hrs a day = 3750 days usage, which also means approximately 10.27 years. However LED lighting like all other lighting is affected by heat. As a result the expected life span of a lamp does depend on the environment it is operating in.
How will I know how much I can save?As LED Commercial are a serviced based organisation and not simply a LED lamp reseller, we will take all the heartache out of assessing your existing facility. We offer a no obligation service to assess your typical energy consumption and provide you with a cost analysis based on how much you are likely to save over the period of the lamps life. This is necessary if you require financial support through the carbon trust as they require a cost justification based on your existing facilities usage.

Are LED lights going to be bright enough for what I need?Dependant on the lamp, in almost every case the light omitted from the LED replacement fitting gives a better quality of light which results in a large improvement to typical existing lamps. This needs to be considered when designing a lighting scheme. The popular colours available for LED’s are “warm white” or “soft white” and “bright white.”

Warm white and soft white will produce a yellow hue, close to incandescent lamps, while bulbs labelled as bright white will produce a whiter light, closer to daylight and similar to what you see in retail and department stores.

If you want to get technical, light colour (colour temperature) is measured in Kelvin’s. The lower the number, the warmer (yellower) the light. So, your typical incandescent lamp is somewhere between 2,700 and 3,500K.

I don’t understand the difference between LED lights and my existing lights because it doesn’t tell me the wattage?Contrary to common belief, wattage isn’t an indication of brightness, but a measurement of how much energy the bulb consumes. For incandescent, there is an accepted correlation between the watts drawn and the brightness, but for LED’s, watts aren’t a great predictor of how bright the bulb will be. (As wattage is a measure of power usage not output, and LED’s draw much less power.

For example, an LED bulb with comparable brightness to a 60-watt incandescent is only 8 to 12 watts. As there isn’t a uniform way to covert incandescent watts to LED watts, Instead, a different form of measurement should be used: lumens.

The lumen (lm) is the real measurement of brightness provided by a light bulb, and is the number you should look for when assessing LED’s.

Can I use LED’s light fittings with my existing dimmer switches?Because of their circuitry, LED’s are not always compatible with traditional dimmable switches. In some cases, the switch must be replaced, or you’ll probably pay a little more for a compatible LED lamp.

Most dimmers, which were likely designed to work with incandescent lamps, work by cutting off the amount of electricity sent to the bulb, hence the less electricity available, the dimmer the light. But with your newly acquired knowledge of LED lighting, you know that there is no direct correlation between LED brightness and energy drawn.

If you’d like you’re LED to be dimmable, you need to do one of two things: find LED bulbs compatible with traditional dimmers, or replace your current dimmer switch with a leading-edge (LED-compatible) dimmer.

It is very important that you know what kind of dimming switch you have, but if you don’t know (or would rather not go through the trouble), simply search for LED bulbs compatible with standard incandescent dimmers.

What are the recommended lighting levels for my workspace?Please view our Lighting Levels chart on our Services page.