Common Questions about LED Lighting From Founder Darrin Selking

LED or Light Emitting Diode technology is changing the lighting industry and landscape lighting is not exempt from that. LED lights are cheaper to run, last longer and are more environmentally friendly. We’ve been getting lots of questions about LED’s and how they can affect landscape design, so I’ve put together some common questions and our answers.

What energy-efficient LED landscape lighting options does your company offer?

The biggest one that’s available right now that came out a couple of years ago and has been refined in the last year or so is LED. This year, we’ve installed more LED than regular halogen lights. The technology has been around for awhile, but it always looked like a bluish white light; it never looked quite right. That changed 2 years ago when Kichler Lighting finally got the color shift down so that LED’s now look like normal halogen landscape lighting.

What’s the difference between Low Voltage landscape lighting and line voltage lighting? Which is more energy efficient?

I think it kind of depends. The majority of our work is standard, low-voltage lighting – that’s probably 85 to 90 percent of our business. But LED this year definitely made a big splash to the point where over the next year or so, manufacturers are coming out with a lot more fixtures that they are converting over to LED. There’s quite a bit of 120-volt products out there, but the most energy efficient outdoor lighting is low voltage, and the LED low voltage is a step beyond that. With low-voltage landscape lighting, the fixtures are very small, the wattages are very low, and we can target the lighting where we need to have it. It can save people a lot of money on energy usage. Sometimes as much as 80% over traditional 120 volt lighting.

How popular are LED lights with your current clients?

They’re very popular for one basic reason – LED uses one-tenth of the energy that halogen lights use. If a standard fixture output that we use on a house, for example, is 20 watts in halogen, we can do the same effect in LED for 4 1/2 watts. You don’t have to use as much wire. You can also downsize your controllers or transformers because you’re running a lot less wattage in the field. The other thing too, is you never have to worry about changing any bulbs because they are 40,000 hour burn time, which is equivalent to 20 years of normal use. We were skeptical about LED at first, but after seeing it in the field it definitely has its place. It’s maintenance free, lower energy cost and you get the same, nice light output that you do at a lot lower wattage. It will change the industry.

LED’s usually cost more than halogen lights – so why should people spend the extra money upfront?

LED is so new that more customers are asking about it, and we bring it up when we’re meeting with new clients. If they desire a high quality, low voltage lighting fixture the LED is for them. You want something that is really durable; it’s going to handle the elements – snow, rain, etc. If you do it with LED, your cost is going to be a little more upfront, but your energy savings are actually going to be greater because the wattage is less, the light output is the same, and there won’t ever be any bulbs to replace. LED installations will pay for the extra upfront cost within a couple years of usage through electricity savings. It’s a win, win all around.

Interested in LED lighting? Contact us today for a free lighting consultation to see how it can fit into your lighting plans.