Monthly Archive for March, 2009

The Basics on LED bulbs: Styles and Uses

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on March 31, 2009
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Choosing an LED Bulb

Common Styles of LED Bulbs

Many, many different models and styles of LED bulbs are emerging in today’s marketplace. With green commerce about to explode, you might want to load up on information about green products like LED bulbs. So here’s the 411 on LED bulbs and the basics of what you’ll want to know choosing a LED bulb or a discount LED Bulb, keep in mind the following:

  • Estimate desired wattage - read the package to choose desired illumination level. For example, a 3W LED is equivalent in output to a 45 W incandescent. There is such a thing is too bright. Know your wattage!
  • Choose between warm and cool light - new LED bulbs are available in ‘cool’ white light, which is ideal for task lighting, and ‘warm’ light commonly used for accent or small area lighting.
  • Standard base or pin base – LED bulbs are available in several types of ‘pin’ sockets or the standard “screw’ (Edison) bases for recessed or track lighting. Don’t get screwed - know your socket!

The common styles of LED bulbs include the following:

Recessed/Track LED bulbs

Available in pin base or standard (Edison) base, LED bulbs are ideal for track or recessed lighting. LED bulbs do not contribute to heat buildup in a room because no matter how long they remain on, they do not get hot to the touch. Also, because they are 90% more efficient than incandescent lights, the frequency of changing bulbs is greatly reduced. So even if you cannot find the discount LED bulbs you are looking for, in the long run, all LED bulbs save money.

Diffused LED bulbs

In this style of  LED bulbs, clusters of LEDs are covered by a dimpled lens which spreads the light out over a wider area. Available in a range of wattage and sizes, these bulbs have many uses, such as area lighting for small rooms, porches, reading lamps, accent lamps, hallways and low-light applications where lights remain on for extended periods.

Spotlight and Floodlight LED Bulbs

Spotlight LED bulbs lack a dispersing lens, so it appears brighter as its light is directed forward. The floodlight model gives a spread-out dispersed light. Well suited for ceiling lights, outdoor floodlights, retail display lighting, landscape lighting and motion sensors.

Are LEDs Really Brighter Than CFLs?

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on March 26, 2009
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Ok, so we know that LEDs last longer than the competition-60 times longer than incandescent lights and 10 times longer than compact florescent lights-but what about brightness? Are LEDs as bright as their counterparts?

It turns out that because LED light functions differently than incandescent or florescent light, there’s no quick and easy answer to that question. LED light is directional, meaning it shines in one focused direction, whereas halogen, incandescent or florescent light spreads out in every direction; it’s omni-directional. This disparity makes a big difference when talking about “lumens per watt,” which is how light output is typically measured.

At the outset, it would appear as if CFLs function at a slightly higher lumen-per-watt ratio than LEDs. Take a look at the average numbers:

Incandescent: 14 lm/W
CFL: 61 lm/W
LED: 57 lm/W

However, these numbers do not take into account fixture efficacy, which usually will reduce CFLs number by half. It works like this: typically, lights are mounted in a recessed fixture. In the case of CFLs, this type of fixture allows some light to escape behind the fixture as it’s reflected back into the ceiling, so that not all light is shining where it’s supposed to, out into the room. What a waste of light! LED lights, on the other hand, do not encounter this problem no matter what type of fixture they’re in, since their light is already directional by nature. Therefore, although CFLs may have a higher lumen per watt number in theory, in reality they’re not actually functioning at that output level when mounted in a recessed fixture, which most usually are.

So in this case, the efficacy of the bulbs while they are INSIDE the fixture is as follows:

LEDs: 57 lumens per watt (lm/W)
CFL’s: 30 lumens per watt (lm/W)

Looks like LEDs win again!

Lighting the Office Space with LED Light Bars

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on March 24, 2009
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Office Space Lighting

Light products like LED light bars are useful for creating a working light scheme for the office.

It’s not impossible to save energy while creating a comfortable and productive work environment. There are solid choices in low energy lighting for the office. Energy conserving lighting products like LED light bars are common, but not all products are appropriate for all applications. Providing an adequate quantity of light is not enough. Lighting quality means comfort, good color, uniformity and balanced brightness. All these factors contribute to long term work performance.  Shadows, glare, flicker or chaotic patterns of light or fixtures are distracting to
employees and should be avoided. Fixtures such as LED light bars should be used to light work spaces evenly and provide light where light is needed.

UNIFORMITY

Light should be distributed relatively uniformly in a work environment, avoiding “hot spots,” shadows or sharp patterns of light and dark. In larger offices or open-plan spaces, use more than one type of light fixture, each with specific distribution characteristics, to light the task and room surfaces most effectively. Use fixtures like LED light bars to like work spaces and desks. Select fixtures specifically designed for wall washing, to light walls from top to bottom. Avoid locating fixtures closer than 3′ from walls. If they are too close, they create harsh patterns and dark upper walls, resulting in a cave-like appearance.

TASK LIGHTING

Using LED light bars as desk lights allows workers to control their own lighting to accommodate their individual visual needs. “Articulated” task lights such as LED light bars, are extremely effective without being expensive and are preferable to undercabinet lights for illuminating the task. In particular, they offer flexibility for different workers and different task requirements, and allow for lower levels of ambient light from the ceiling-mounted light fixtures.

UNDERCABINET LIGHTS

Wall cabinets and cabinets attached to furniture partitions create disturbing shadows on the vertical surfaces they overhang. A low quantity of lighting should be provided to remove this shadow and maintain a balance of brightness. Undercabinet lights like LED light bars are available commercially or sold as part of the furniture system.

Creating a comfortable work space is more than ergonomics and choosing soothing wall colors; ensuring that there is ample light is a critical part of creating a happy work force.

Stay on the Scene with LED Light Machines!

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Christine
on March 20, 2009
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The Latest Trend in the Nightclub Industry is LED Lighting Systems

Anyone who likes to socialize on occasion knows that the lighting and ambiance of a bar or club can affect how the evening turns out as much as the company you’re keeping or the drink in your hand. Who hasn’t walked into a place that’s not well lit, or even worse, is too well lit and leaves little-like that annoying zit on your nose-to the imagination?

In order create the best possible experience in social venues like these, we’ve come up with three main tasks club and bar lighting should accomplish:

Vendome Mayfair – London
1)    Ambiance: If bar-hoppers wanted to sit at home in their living rooms and look at each other, they could and would. Club and bar lighting should have a transformative effect-when customers walk in the door they should feel as if they’re entering a new, exciting space.

2)    Provide (just enough) visibility- It’s not only “beer goggles” that help us (and the person we’re flirting with) look better when we go out, it’s also the flattering lighting-low lighting not only hides blemishes, but also allows patrons to feel more confident and social, which will create a livelier, more welcoming environment in any venue.
Paramount Bar, London
3)    Entertain: whether the look you’re going for is minimal and sleek or borders on sensory overload, more and more late-night venues are striving to impress through illumination displays, and customers are expecting to be at least amused, if not astounded, by lighting effects when they walk in the doors. Furthermore, lighting can effectively be used on the dance floor to further engage a crowd in any musical performance. Certain internal programs can achieve this by linking the beat of the music or movements of the crowd to the light display.

China Doll Club – Beijing

It just so turns out that LED lighting is the newest and best way to achieve these goals in the nightlife scene. Not only are LEDs more economical and environmentally sound, they’re also more durable, can be tailored to fit the needs of any space, can easily create light that flows through the color spectrum, changing the mood from high energy to sultry or cozy on command. Check out Elemental’s full selection of RGB lighting kits or view our LED lighting control systems.


All images from www.thecoolhunter.net

Indoor and Outdoor Uses for LED Lighting

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on March 19, 2009
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Indoor-Outdoor LED Lighting

Get your “Green” on with LED lighting.

LED lighting is emerging as the leading green lighting source. Advances in LED lighting is making the technology more and more accessible for people who are looking for a little mood lighting and wish to get their “Green” on as well. Below is a list of the myriad residential indoor and outdoor uses for LED lighting.

Indoor LED Lighting

  • Staircase: Use recessed LED lighting in the wall adjacent to a staircase as a feature and a guide light. Small round LED lights are most suitable for this type of application. Position the lights in the wall, on a line midway between each stair nosing.
  • Hallway: Use recessed LED lighting in the wall near to the floor to provide feature lighting. Position rectangular (longitudinal) recessed lights in the wall approximately 200mm above the floor level for a good effect.
  • Nursery: Use LED lighting in a nursery, to provide low level lighting that you can leave on during the night, being low illumination and low cost. Use the colour blue for this application; it will create a serene lighting effect.
  • Floor: Use LED lighting recessed into the floor in any room to provide feature and guide lighting. It’s cool running and you and the pets, can walk on it.
  • Bathroom: Use LED lighting recessed into the floor to provide feature and guide lighting. In the walls to create mood lighting.

Outdoor LED Lighting

  • Entrance to Driveway: Use LED lighting here to mark the entrance to your driveway.
  • Use LED brick lights to replace a brick in the wall either side of the entrance.
  • Position LED lighting on gateposts.
  • Garden: Use LED lighting here to great visual effect, by highlighting areas of shrubbery, borders to flower beds and accents to individual trees and plants of interest.
  • Use spotlights and LED ground buried lights to theme the lighting, using particular colors to add interest and make your garden come alive. Enjoy your garden not only in the day, but also at night.
  • Patio: Use surface mounted or ground buried LED lighting here to add interest and define the outline, or mark out particular areas of the patio.
  • Decking: Use surface or recessed LED lighting here to add interest and define the outline, or mark out particular areas of the decking platform.
  • Pond: Use submersible LED lighting in the pond to add color and to bring life to this area of your garden

Feel free to illuminate guilt-free. LED lighting is an environmentally conscious way to light up your home and garden.

Using LED Light Bars to Create Layers of Light

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on March 17, 2009
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Creating Lighting Schemes

Layering light with LED light bars and other designer tricks used to create ambient and indirect lighting.

Designers use the latest technology and lightening tricks such as LED light bars to create spaces and places.  The spaces that people use for social purposes are defined in part by light. Too often, however, conventional lighting design misses the fact that how we light our space says a lot about who we are and what we value.

Light and Atmosphere

Let’s talk about the mistakes made in lighting. Think about the typical office lighting scheme or department store and you will get a glimpse into the thinking of many disastrously conventional lighting plans. Through the use of uniform light, many attempt to light everything and end up highlighting nothing. When light is totally even, it is cold, unreal and uncomfortable. Think instead of the intimacy and warmth of a restaurant with lights over the tables, the cozy arm chair in your den with its lamp to read by, or the LED light bars used to light a desk work area.

Layers of Light

There are some basic ways to arrange the lighting in your home. Here are some basic tips that will help you to create a natural lighting.

•    Ambient lighting does nothing else but provides general, all-purpose light and enables people to move about the home safely. Unless visually demanding activities are done in the room, you should avoid high light levels from ambient lighting, and instead complement the ambient light with individual accent and or task lighting such as LED light bars and puck lights.

•    Indirect lighting, a form of ambient lighting, uses one or more luminaires to throw light onto the ceiling and upper walls of a room. This is also called uplighting. Indirect lighting minimizes shadows and reflected glare that bounces off the ceiling. Uplighting is particularly useful when using glossy paper or reflective surfaces such as computer or television screens.

•    Wall washing is used to light a vertical surface to an even, consistent brightness. This technique draws the eye to the wall and is often used to accentuate a large piece of art, a dramatic fireplace or an entrance. Wall washing is accomplished by placing luminaries such as LED light bars or rope lights in or on the ceiling or on the floor at regular intervals and is used to help make a room feel larger.

•    Accent Lighting emphasizes objects by focusing light directly on them. You can create very dramatic effects with accent lighting by using directional luminaries. Be warned, however, that with accent lighting it is easy to overdo it - a room with too much accent lighting may appear disorganized and feel chaotic. Remember that if you light everything, nothing will be highlighted. Use your LED light bars, rope lights and puck lights wisely.

Using layers of light creates a warm, inviting and creative space for you to live your life in. Get innovative with the newest tools and tricks, like LED light bars and rope lights to create a home that illuminates your life.

LED Lights: Part of a Stimulus for Good Design

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on March 16, 2009
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Making Green, Sustainable Designs Available

It’s time for products like LED lights to go mainstream.

Green energy is gaining power. The current global economic climate has demanded a change. Change will soon be coming to America through new energy sources, new products, new buildings and new ways of thinking. Emerging technologies such as LED lights lead the stimulus for good, green design. LED lights aren’t just for cell phones anymore. More and more cities buy LED lights to help light their skylines with fresh green light.  LED lights are finding their way into homes across American along with other changes.

One goal of the energy stimulus is to ensure that money spent goes to creative, sustainable buildings and technologies, like LED lights, that will stand the test of time and will still be used by our children and our grandchildren. After all, they are the ones who are going to be paying for these debt-financed projects.

Government sponsorship of great architecture and design has a proud tradition in the United States, starting with Thomas Jefferson, himself an architect and the designer of Monticello, the University of Virginia and the Virginia Capitol. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal gives us an instructive model for our challenge today.

President Obama’s stimulus package has already been compared to the New Deal as a jobs creation program. As part of FDR’s response to the Great Depression, numerous public-works projects were funded by the federal government. Those projects put people back to work, but they also created civic masterworks that still stand, like the Golden Gate Bridge and Camp David.

Perhaps the greatest design opportunity the economic stimulus can give us is for green and sustainable design to become an automatic and essential part of the new economy. Sustainable architecture of new buildings and design of green products, like LED lights, will no longer be an added extra; these designs will be the norm.  More people will be given the opportunity to buy LED lights and other green products like energy efficient automobiles as the become part of the popular marketplace.

In the same way that a bailout for the auto industry presents the prospect of reorienting the design of automobiles in a sustainable direction, so the economic stimulus package offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reorient our architectural focus toward sustainable design. There are few better ways to do that than to put federal contracting dollars behind sustainable design.

Save Money This Summer With LED Lights

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on March 13, 2009
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Summertime is almost here, and you know what that means—lots of time outdoors in the warm night air, barbecuing with friends and taking nighttime dips in the pool. And while moonlight and fireworks help, they can only do so much to brighten things up—you’re going to have to shed a little light on your evening activities if you want to enjoy your summer to the fullest. But turning on the lights outside doesn’t mean you have to turn down spending elsewhere to compensate for the spike in your energy bill, not if you’re using LED lights, that is!

So give the fireflies a break: here are a few of our best LED products to light up any summer evening.

A Pool of Light

Around the rim of a pool, above or below the water, our flexible, waterproof strip LED lighting is just what you need! This commercial-grade product is made specifically to withstand the wear and tear it would receive in a busy place like your pool in the summertime. And, conveniently, it’s also one of our most efficient products, using only 1.6 watts of energy per foot.

Get the same seamless, 120-degree angle glow, with double the light with our brighter waterproof flexible LED light. It’s efficiency means it uses only 2.2 watts per foot, and also safer (less likelihood of fire and shock) than the incandescent equivalent.

A Radiant Ramble

Make sure your barbecue guests don’t miss a beat as they arrive (or stumble home from) your abode. Our 20-inch white waterproof light bars offer uninterrupted light on your front walkway or backyard path. And, They’re impervious to sprinklers, rain, or—when the summer’s sadly over—to snow!

A Glowing Garden

Get the mood just right with our RGB Waterproof LED spool, which changes colors fluidly, curves to fit any structure, and performs in a temperature range of negative four to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the perfect product to create ambiance in any garden, grotto, gazebos or hot tub.

Efficient Living Calls for Efficient Lighting

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on March 12, 2009
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When we hear the phrase “efficient lighting,” most often we think of energy efficiency-lighting that gives you a lot of bang for your buck and doesn’t take an entire oil well to power. But another important aspect of lighting is how efficiently it lights a space or surface. While it’s true that there are circumstances in which dramatic shadow effects are a nice touch, in most cases, shadows or dark spots get in the way of the functionality of the light and therefore make the light itself less effective in accomplishing its task.

In modular homes, smaller apartments, offices or living spaces, for example, efficient use of space and light is key when it comes to creating a modernized ambiance; doing so will create an clean aesthetic and will transform cramped, close quarters into productive, enjoyable work or living spaces.

Elemental LED offers the best in streamlined lighting options, from our strip and under cabinet lighting products to our light bars, which also come in a waterproof option, great for bathrooms! Our 20 Inch LED bar, for instance, creates an uninterrupted stream of light with no dark spots, and has the added bonus of being extremely efficient, as it only uses 3.5 watts of energy. This type of lighting has many uses, and would work wonders in any restaurant, lounge, casino, home or retail store or hotel.

Speaking of hotels, the Everland Hotel (pictured at left and above) is a portable hotel room/exhibition space/ installation art piece. Designed by Swiss artists Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann, the Everland currently sits atop the Palais De Tokyo in Paris, and offers a great example of how LED lighting can be used in a small space to create a modern and spacious effect.

Waterproof LED Lights for Backyard Landscaping

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on March 11, 2009
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Green Your Green Thumb with Waterproof LED Lights

Adding Night Light to Your Yard with Waterproof LED lights.

Outdoor lighting can provide homeowners with sufficient light at night to walk about safely, discourage crime, and add an aesthetic to the night landscape. Many people are choosing to light their yards with waterproof LED lights. Using waterproof LED lights illuminates the yard without being a big energy drain.

Safe, energy efficient, low-voltage, waterproof LED lights are readily available and are suitable for many applications, including deck lighting and garden walkways. This eco-friendly lighting system uses light-emitting diodes (LED’s), and therefore consumes far less energy.

Waterproof LED lights lasts for 50,000 hours and works on a carbon diet, which translates to lower emissions. Your green thumb can truly stay green when you choose waterproof LED lights.

Preparing to light your landscaping is an important part of creating the overall aesthetic. Here are some simple steps to follow before you install your waterproof LED lights.

  • Note the areas of the backyard you would like to illuminate during the evening. What areas of your yard and garden would be best highlighted by waterproof LED lights?
  • Move to your patio or deck, and make the same notes. Go through your entire yard from all different angles, repeating this process.
  • Consider the things you want changed. You want to have all your landscaping completed before you install lighting.
  • Make detailed notes and carefully plan all the changes. Think about how the yard will look once you have finished it. You may need more lighting in some areas than others depending on usage.

Waterproof LED lights are the perfect way to illuminate your landscaping without worrying about increasing your energy bill or carbon imprint.