How to choose the right lighting

The LED (Light Emitting Diode) is an electronic chip that emits light when an electric current flows through it.

As a general rule, the electricity consumption of a good quality LED source is, for the same light output, about 7-8 times less than that of an incandescent bulb! The energy saving is therefore substantial and significantly reduces the environmental footprint.

The service life can reach, for the middle and top-of-the-range models, between 25’000 or 35’000 or even 50’000 hours.

Wikipedia: By definition, 1 lumen corresponds to the luminous flux emitted in a solid angle of 1 steradian by an isotropic (uniform point) light source located at the apex of the solid angle and whose luminous intensity is 1 candela2…

Simply put, the lumen (lm) is a unit for measuring the light power emitted by a light source. Below is a table allowing an approximate comparison of the luminous power of incandescent bulbs with LED sources.

It should also be noted that at the same luminous power, LED sources appear to illuminate more. This is due to the fact that they emit a more directional and therefore more concentrated light than most conventional bulbs.

In lighting, the colour temperature indicates the overall hue produced by a light source. Measured in degrees Kelvin (K), it can vary from a « warm » yellow near 2700° K to a « cold » blue around 6000° K.

As a general rule, the choice of colour temperature will be towards warm white (around 2700° K) for relaxing and pleasant effects and towards daylight white (around 6000° K) for spaces that stimulate concentration at work.

In between, neutral white (approx. 3000 – 4000° K) is particularly recommended for functional areas such as kitchens and bathrooms.

This index, whose number is between 0 and 100, indicates the ability of a lamp to make us distinguish all colours. The higher the index, the better we can distinguish the colours of the illuminated objects.

Daylight has an ideal CRI of 100. The CRI of the majority of LED lamps on the market is around 80, but better quality models have a CRI greater than 90 (very good colour rendering).

Some light sources allow you to vary the light intensity (Lumen) and thus create different atmospheres. For this, it is imperative that a source is « dimmable », as well as a dimmer. Dimmers can be switches, remote controls or even, more recently, Wi-Fi applications driven by smartphones or voice commands.