5 SIMPLE STEPS TO CHOOSE THE BEST LED DOWNLIGHT

5 SIMPLE STEPS TO CHOOSE THE BEST LED DOWNLIGHT

1. The led color temperature should be 2700k

When buying LED Downlights for your home, you want the same warm and ambient feeling that you are accustomed to getting from halogen and incandescent lamps. The "warm white" sounds ideal - but it's just a description, and not very accurate. To get the effect you want, it is much better to look for the actual color temperature, which is measured in Kelvin (K). To recreate the warmth of halogens and incandescent lamps you need a 2700K rating.

Both lamps are described here as "warm white": the image on the left is 2700K and the right is 3000k.

2. Choose a led with a 95+ crew

Color rendering index (CRI) The CRI informs you about the "quality" of the light you are receiving. It is a measure of how well the light source will reproduce the true range of balanced colors of the objects it illuminates.

So if you have a beautiful brown leather chair or bright cushions and want your best look, you need a high CRI score.

Traditional halogens and incandescent lamps have a CRI score of 99 out of 100, which means we are all accustomed to exceptional light quality.

Most LED downlights to have a color rendering index score of 80. That's fine for many home uses, but if you don't want a 20% drop in light quality when you switch to LED, you need lamps with a CRI of at least 95.

In these images, the high CRI lighting highlights the vibrant colors on the child's play mat and the floor. Both look so good under the CRI 99 of the incandescent lamp (left) and the 97 CRI of our 11w LED bulb (right). But the CRI 80 light makes everything seem boring and flat.

Don't bore your life

See the color difference in the two images below. The image on the right looks more vibrant and bright, it is particularly obvious in the brown leather chair, the red throw and the wooden floor. The High CRI Lighting in the image on the right is bringing out the true colors of the items, while the low CRI LEDs are making everything more dull and sterile in the left image.

As shocking as the use of images like these is, the effects of CRI are much more visual and obvious in person.

3. Get a lifetime warranty on the entire led bulb

When it comes to indicating the life of a lamp, LED companies often allow optimism to get the best of them. A good quality LED chip can last up to 50,000 hours, but the LED bulb you buy will last only while it’s other components - which essentially means the power supply. Most power supplies have a life of 10,000-20,000 hours. At Well-Lit, we have tested a large number of LED products. We have not yet found an LED projector that is built to last 50,000 hours. What we do find are stains with components that are simply incompatible with the claimed shelf life. Tip: make sure the warranty you get is for the entire LED lamp and not the LED chip alone. This avoids problems if the lamps fail, but the LED will continue to work, as it usually is.

4. Choose a Led Downlight with great heat dissipation

Without effective heat dissipation to protect critical components, high temperatures will have a severe effect on performance and reliability. Designing and building an effective heat dissipation system requires specialized skills and high-quality materials. Cutting corners in this area is a sure way to produce cheaper LEDs but at the expense of long-term reliability. As we will see shortly, the capacitors within the power supply may be particularly susceptible. But for now, we are going to find out what good and bad heat dissipation looks like in practice.

The first image shows an LED point that is widely available in the United Kingdom. The red color indicates the hottest areas. The heat dissipation system is virtually non-existent, and the generated heat is retained in the worst possible place - in the LED area just below the lens assembly. After a few hours of use, the heat will begin to compromise the longevity of the chip. The chances of this LED projector reaching its estimated life are remote.

5. Choose a Led Downlight with a high-quality power supply

Many new converts to LED lighting are disappointed to find their lamps fail completely within a year or two of purchase. When we have these lamps in the workbench, we find that the cause is usually the capacitors of the power supply - not the LED itself. These condensers have a maximum temperature rating of anywhere between 80 degrees C to 130 degrees C. The higher the rating, the higher the cost to the manufacturer - you can probably guess the rest. Continuous operation at maximum temperature will reduce product life. Operating above the maximum ratings is even worse. Here you can see a wide range of power supplies that we have recently taken out of LED lamps for general sale in the UK. A good one,