5 common mistakes to avoid when upgrading to LED lighting

Replacing your traditional lighting with LED is more comprehensive than just removing the halogen bulb and installing the LED bulb. There are many factors to consider and many steps in the process can end in failure. Therefore, we have gathered five typical mistakes, which might be useful to be aware of before upgrading to LED lighting.

Frequently, we are asked about everything from installation of LED luminaires to more technical questions about colour rendering and colour temperature. Hence, the purpose of this week’s blog post is to gather the most prevalent questions to an FAQ of common mistakes to avoid when you replace fluorescent tubes or halogen bulbs with LED.

1: You ground your purchase on the LED luminaire’s power consumption

This is one of the most common mistakes when traditional lighting is replaced by LED lighting. The power consumption, which is measured in watt, indicates the amount of power consumed by the light source. However, the power consumption does not inform about the amount of light emitted by the light source in relation to the consumed power. For this purpose, you must look at the light source’s energy efficiency, which is measured in lumen per watt (LPW). LED luminaires consume relatively less power than traditional sources of light and for this reason, you should not replace a 20W halogen spot with a 20W LED spot. You should instead replace it with an LED-spot with similar energy efficiency as the original spot.

2: Your new LED lighting has a different light distribution

How the light is distributed in the room can be crucial to how the atmosphere in the room appears. If you replace your traditional lighting with LED, you might experience a more concentrated light distribution. For LED luminaires differ from traditional light sources by emitting a more direct light, whereby you avoid that the light is distributed in all directions. However, this spill light can be beneficial, wherefore you should look for LED luminaires with diffusers. In this way, you will experience more uniform and smooth lighting.

3: You are neither familiar with CRI nor CTT

When upgrading to LED lighting there are two technical terms you should be aware of.

The first is Colour Rendering Index (CRI). CRI is measured on a scale from 0-100 and indicates the light source’s ability to render colours in a room. Typically, LED luminaires have a CRI value of between 70 and 95, but what you should pursue depends on where the luminaire will be installed. In industrial kitchens and at operating rooms the CRI must be higher than 90, whereas it might be sufficient with CRI70 in storage buildings or for outdoor use.

The second is Colour Temperature (CTT). The colour temperature is measured in Kelvin (K), and the Kelvin degree indicates how cold or warm the light is. Light sources with a colour temperature of 1,200-2,700 emit a warm and intimate light and for this reason, you will often find these light sources in restaurants. Light sources with a colour temperature of 3,000K are suitable for offices, whereas 5,000K preferred on museums and in galleries.

Do you want to know more about these terms? Then read our previous blog posts about colour rendering and colour temperature.

4: You do not check up on the supplier

In line with LED bulbs’ increased popularity, the market for LED lighting has exploded during the last couple of years. There are many suppliers to choose from, but not everyone is equally genuine and the quality varies a lot from one manufacturer to another. Therefore, you must thoroughly check out the supplier before investing in new LED lighting. At Lumega we are specialists in LED lighting and contrary to other LED suppliers, we are exclusively occupied with LED. For this reason, you can confidently rely on Lumega, if you want a professional LED solution.

5: You do not get a decent warranty

This is correlated with the fourth bullet on our list, seeing that quality and warranty often are interrelated. First, you must check if your LED luminaire is covered by warranty at all and thereupon, you should check the length of the given warranty. At Lumega all of our products are covered by a 5-year warranty unless otherwise mentioned. Examples of Lumega products with a 5-year warranty include our popular LED downlight NS11 as well as our robust LED luminaire NS45.