# New LED Lighting classifications.



## Andy in Germany (18 Sep 2022)

I'm dipping a toe into the Brave New World of LED Domestic lights and my goodness but it's confusing. How is the brightness of LED lights measured, and how does that compare to the old incandescent/fluorescent bulbs?

For reference I've got a one room apartment with five sockets. The apartment wasn't well thought through and I've only got two switches for these, and I noticed some LED lights have a remote control feature which would make them more flexible. Also, I will want to have some bright lights partly because it is a basement apartment so it will be dark in winter, but also because I will hopefully have a model railway at some point which I'll want to take pictures of.

I have a vague plan of using three "normal" lights and two LED flootlights which I can dim or turn on and off using the remote control as additional bright light or for photography, but for this I need to know what is a "bright" light in LED terms?


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## bikingdad90 (18 Sep 2022)

With LED’s you need to consider the angle of the throw, must LED spotlights are around 60 degrees which is pretty much downwards only but if you want a wide angle to throw the light outwards and cover a large area you need to find ones with an angle of around 120 onwards.

The wattage is generally a 1/10 of a normal bulb so 5w is equivalent to a 50w, 6w for 60w etc. the bigger the wattage the “brighter” the light.

You may also need to look at the colour. There is clinic cool daylight which is very white through to warm which is more yellow.


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## chriswoody (18 Sep 2022)

When we renovated our house about 10 years ago, we swapped all of the bulbs for LED bulbs which are direct replacements for the old style light bulbs.

https://www.obi.de/e27-led/philips-...orm-e27-6-5-w-806-lm-warmweiss-matt/p/8486359.

As biking dad mentions above, there is the power in watts to think about, so where you might use 60w normally, say in the lounge, you can replace that with a 6w LED. 

Then there is the colour of the light, which is measured in Kelvin. Old fashioned Halogens would be about 3000K, and newer LED's can be found in quite a wide range of Kelvin. The ones I've fitted in our house are 2800K and give off a nice warm light. There's a short article here giving a quick overview of light and the Kelvin scale:

https://www.lumens.com/the-edit/the-guides/understanding-kelvin-color-temperature/

A couple of our rooms (Kitchen and bathrooms) have suspended ceilings with flush LED spotlights in, so here, as well as the power and temperature, you need to consider the angle of the throw, as biking dad mentions above. This information can be a lot trickier to find, but is really relevant, you want to illuminate a room, not just the area immediately under the light. I've found Paulmann to be a good company for LED spots, with a wide range and really high build quality.


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## Tail End Charlie (18 Sep 2022)

Also I seem to recall that you need special "dimmable" LED bulbs if you want to dim them. Not sure why, or what the difference is, just remember my electrician telling me so.


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## bikingdad90 (18 Sep 2022)

Tail End Charlie said:


> Also I seem to recall that you need special "dimmable" LED bulbs if you want to dim them. Not sure why, or what the difference is, just remember my electrician telling me so.



To be honest, I’d forget about dimmable; the LEDs don’t turn on if there isn’t enough voltage unlike traditional filament bulbs which will light even with minimal voltage. I’d never found a workable LED for low lighting, only at medium to high.


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## Arrowfoot (18 Sep 2022)

Test the type of bulb you want as well as the brightness. So need to find a store that can swap.
I found 2.7K, the best - homely feeling.


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## Over the Ord (18 Sep 2022)

Done all of above, 2 years later all went into the bin because the light was so low we couldn’t read a book in winter.

We choose light bulbs by lux and purchased the following GLS LED DIM 7w ES Clear 2700k £7.00 x 6.


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## Mike_P (18 Sep 2022)

bikingdad90 said:


> To be honest, I’d forget about dimmable; the LEDs don’t turn on if there isn’t enough voltage unlike traditional filament bulbs which will light even with minimal voltage. I’d never found a workable LED for low lighting, only at medium to high.



I have a dimmable LED in the spare bedroom allowing it be used for other purposes with the LED brightly illuminating the whole room or being subdued. Had problems with a buzzing noise initially which changing the dangling bulb holder failed to resolve. Changed the bulb, still a buzz, refitted the original bulb and no buzzing. Eh? Puzzled how it seemed to self resolve itself.


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## newts (18 Sep 2022)

Lower temp lamps (warmer colour) tend to be used for living/bedrooms & higher temp (cool white/daylight) for kitchens/bathrooms.
We went from 200w down to 27w on kitchen lighting when swapping to led lamps (2600 lumens)
Short payback on initial lamp cost & large energy saving long term.
When the UK first banned incandescant lamps, the alternative was flourescent lamps that had very poor light & halogen lamps that would also heat the house with their inefficiency. LED's have come along way in receny years & cost reduced dramatically.


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## Daninplymouth (18 Sep 2022)

It us much easier to dim leds these days, most self contained fittings are dimmable and colour switchable then just look for an LED dimmer. I’d recommend Zano or a Click MD9014 work really well


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## Andy_R (19 Sep 2022)

Mike_P said:


> I have a dimmable LED in the spare bedroom allowing it be used for other purposes with the LED brightly illuminating the whole room or being subdued. Had problems with a buzzing noise initially which changing the dangling bulb holder failed to resolve. Changed the bulb, still a buzz, refitted the original bulb and no buzzing. Eh? Puzzled how it seemed to self resolve itself.



You need to make sure the dimmer control is compatable with led lights


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## Mike_P (19 Sep 2022)

Andy_R said:


> You need to make sure the dimmer control is compatable with led lights


The one I used was from Screwfix - British General 900 series , cat no 65335


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## Andy_R (19 Sep 2022)

Mike_P said:


> The one I used was from Screwfix - British General 900 series , cat no 65335



What wattage was the bullb? If it was less than 5 watts,that would be the issue.


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## Mike_P (19 Sep 2022)

Andy_R said:


> What wattage was the bullb? If it was less than 5 watts,that would be the issue.



12 watt. Toolstation 54833.


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## icowden (19 Sep 2022)

An alternative to "dimmer" compatible is to go with smart bulbs like Hue or Lifx. You can dim just by talking to your Alexa or Google Assistant.
My daughter has hers set up to "blast off" - with a suitable sound effect before they light up. Older daughter has LED strips which she uses "lumos" and "Nox" to turn on and off.

Plus you can set nice colours and scenes.


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## neil_merseyside (20 Sep 2022)

You need a different dimmer, you have leading edge dimmer but need a trailing edge version for LEDs.


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## Andy in Germany (25 Sep 2022)

Thanks for the replies, sorry it took so long to respond. It occurs to me that some more information would be handy, so here's a highly accurate engineers drawing of the apartment:







The model Railway will most likely run along the wall at the top, all the windows are at the bottom.

I suspect the architect spent a total of about fifteen minutes designing this apartment; at a guess one switch operates lights 1,3, and 4; and the other operates 2 and 5.

My initial thought was to use LED floods in position 4 & 5 with a filter to diffuse the light, or even to bounce it off the window/door wall to make it more diffused; the wall is painted white and the windows have a frosting foil on the windows which would bounce the light well.

To get around the question of colour and make the lights independent of the existing circuitry I was looking at something like these LED floodlights. They have a 120° range, and RGB capability.

The disadvantage of this is that they would project shadows on the wall. Any thoughts how I could deal with that?


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