Stylish LED Lighting

There can be few more stylish forms of lighting than LEDs. Once the preserve of novelty items, torches and Christmas lights, LEDs have really started to come of age in the last year or so and I believe will soon rival and then overtake conventional incandescent and even energy saving CFL light bulbs as the primary technology for domestic lighting.

The reason for this belief is simple: the convergence of two trends. First there is serious pressure from governments all over the world to ban all light bulbs that do not meet energy saving standards - and that encompasses pretty much all incandescent bulbs. Second, the extraordinary blossoming of LED technology itself, as if LED lighting was destined for this moment.

This new world where low energy lighting is fast becoming mandatory provides fertile ground for explosive development of this already impressive form of lighting. The twin imperatives of climate change and oil depletion are leading to concentrated focus on both cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels and on appliances that consume considerably less precious energy.

Lighting is both pervasive and necessary to modern life and nothing else comes remotely close to what LED lighting can already deliver and promises for the future in terms of energy saving.

Already the dominance of low voltage outdoor LED lighting and LED based solar garden lights point the way to how far and fast this technology can spread once it enters a particular field of application.

From the garden into the house itself, again we see how easily LED spotlights can replace halogen lamps in kitchens and bathrooms especially, where cool, bright, directional lighting is desirable. Cree LED spotlights provide a straightforward, direct replacement for existing 25w halogen lamps that anyone can install and reap 90% savings on their electricity bills - right now.

What about cool garage lighting using LED spotlights and wall wash effects? Garages often suffer where good natural light is concerned and fluorescent lighting is a poor choice due to it's low CRI (Color Rendering Index - the measure of how lifelike things look when rendered under artificial light) whereas LED spotlights boast a high CRI.

But it is not just that LED lighting is ultra low energy, the light quality itself is clear, clean, bright and seemingly infinitely configurable, as this introduction to LED lighting suggests.

I predict we are going to be hearing, and of course seeing, a whole lot more on the this very subject.