With all the advances in LED lighting, from warmer tones to brighter illumination, the homeowner who wants to reduce their electricity bills while maintaining a bright home has many choices. LED lighting can increase the functionality of spaces while providing decorative touches that can be difficult for regular lighting. It will also eventually pay for itself, since it lasts longer than incandescent lighting. Here are a four different ways to use LED lighting in your home or business.
1. Use It For Cabinetry – Dark kitchens can appear smaller and make it difficult to find handy kitchen utensils. By adding LED lighting within cabinets and even in the drawers, homeowners can not only bright up a space, but make it easier to find Grandma’s favorite gravy boat stored in the back of a cabinet. The same type of lighting is also useful in business for lighting up glass cabinets or jewelry display cases to heighten the sparkle effect, while making items more visible.
2. Light Up a Pathway – A dark walkway outside makes it impossible to find your way to the door at night. Similarly, indoor staircases with poor lighting can be trip hazards. There is both LED lighting for indoor and outdoor pathways that can be installed along the edges to make the path clearly visible, even on a moonless night.
3. Accent Lighting – There is no better choice for accent lighting than LED lighting. It can help to define a work area in the kitchen, a bar area in the basement, or as a backdrop to aquariums. It can come in many colors and tones. It can even provide additional lighting to show off your art and collectibles in tight spaces on the walls or on a small shelf.
4. Regular Lighting Needs – LED lighting is available in warm or cool colors, thus making it ideal for mood lighting in a room. It can be used as recessed lighting in areas that need some extra spot lights. It has become so versatile and easy to install that it can be used anywhere in the house in place of regular lighting.
How LED Differs in Costs
LED lights can last several years and don’t use as much energy as incandescent lights. While it may seem that LED lights are more expensive than incandescent, this does not factor in the cost of energy use over the lifetime of the bulbs. LEDwaves.com estimates that a typical incandescent bulb costs $41.39 to operate annually, versus $4.97 per year for an LED bulb, with electricity costing 12.6 cents per kWh. Since LEDs can last as long as 11 years without replacement, those savings quickly add up. It doesn’t matter whether you choose a warm tone or a cool tone, you’ll still get similar savings. If you’re trying to reduce your electricity needs, look into LED lighting to make the switch today.