Landscape lighting has changed over the last decade tremendously and the largest contributor to these changes is the emergence of the Light Emitting Diode or LED as they are most commonly known.
Landscape lighting, when first introduced, was using halogen bulbs exclusively, at least in the low voltage landscape lighting, which is what the large majority of landscape lighting exists of in today’s marketplace.
Halogen bulbs were great, because they were less wattage than what was previously being used as landscape lighting, which was the large 120V landscape lighting systems.
With the emergence of LED bulbs and more recently landscape lighting fixtures with the LED bulbs built into the fixture itself, which are called “Integrated LED Fixtures”; low voltage landscape lighting systems have become very energy friendly as well as very low maintenance.
Below are some comparisons along with some facts about both types of bulbs.
The most heavily used landscaping lighting bulb is the MR-16 bulb and the halogen bulbs are normally 20-watt, 35 watt or 50 watts.
Depending on the manufacturer, the compatible MR-16 LED bulbs for the wattages listed for the halogen bulbs are 3 watts through 7 watts. 3- and 4-watt MR-16 LED bulbs compare to the 20-watt halogen bulbs; 5- and 6-watt MR-16 LED bulbs compare to the 35-watt halogen bulbs and the 7-watt MR-16 LED bulbs compare to the 50-watt halogen bulbs. As you can see, the LED bulbs operate at a higher efficiency rate with a much lower wattage output. Wattage output is not the only determining factor for the brightness levels of LED’s; there are a few other elements involved which will be discussed in a later blog.
The average halogen bulbs for path lights are 10 and 20 watts and the compatible LED path light bulbs are 1 and 2 watts.
As you can see, there is a pretty large difference in the amount of energy consumed between the halogen and LED bulbs.
LED bulbs do generate heat, but not to the degree that halogen bulbs do. Halogen bulbs can burn your fingers if directly touched while operating.
LED bulbs also offer much more beam angles as well as multiple color options as depicted by a Kelvin scale. The Kelvin scale ranges from 2000K, more yellow in color to 7000K, which is bluer in color.
Exo Design utilizes LED bulbs in the 2700K, 3000K and 3900K colors.
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