LED Home Lighting

About LED Replacements For Halogen Lamps

If you are considering replacing 12v halogen lamps with LED substitutes, then listed here are some of the LED products currently available in many DIY and lighting stores.

When fitting LED lighting bear in mind that it is typically very bright but also very focused, in other words the light tends to illuminate a fairly confined area which can lead to a spotted effect if you’re not careful. The easiest solutions are to a) consider the beam angle of the LED bulb you are fitting (a wider angle will spread the light out and avoid spotting) and b) install more lights but with a lower brightness level and/or softer color (find out more about how LED light colors affect light quality).

When replacing halogen downlight recessed into the ceiling void check to see whether or not the existing fittings are fire rated. If you remove the halogen lamp and look up there will be a domed metal can enclosing the aperture if the fitting is fire rated, otherwise there will simply be a void.

Many LED replacement bulbs will easily slot into fire rated halogen downlighter fittings, but some are slightly too big. Either identify the correct size lamp for the fitting or replace the fittings since unlike halogen lamps, LED spotlights run cool and do not therefore pose a serious fire risk.

In most cases, if you are installing or replacing existing down lights (typically in kitchens, bathrooms and hall ways) you should aim for an equivalent brightness to about a 35 watt incandescent halogen lamp. This is plenty bright enough for a working area such as a kitchen, and you could easily consider dropping to the equivalent of 25w for an area that doesn’t require such bright light or if for example your kitchen is also equipped with supplementary lighting in the form of under shelf strip lights and cabinet display lighting that already illuminate worktop areas.

Examples of LED Replacements For Halogen Lamps

The rate of change in LED lighting is so fast that it’s difficult to keep pace with the latest developments, but here’s a quick tour of a few names to look for in LED spotlight products (as noted above, these are great if you are interested in exploring some of the latest kitchen lighting ideas as they don’t contribute extra unwanted heat and can produce financial savings quite quickly since many people use their kitchen more than any other room in the house).

EXERGI

Strange name but a great product. EXERGI is a UK based manufacturer that has built on Cree LED technology to produce one of the brightest (and arguably brightest per watt) GU10 LED light bulbs available to the domestic market today.

EXERGI lamps are also available as direct replacements for MR16 (also known as GU5.3) and GLS (regular “light bulb” shape with a typical ES base) and come in both warm white and cool white variants.

These will save you a truly sizeable amount of money over time (try this handy LED Savings Calculator) and are easily available to buy online - just search for the name.

BriLux V Series

The BriLux Series has previously offered 3w LED spotlights in a range of colors from warm white at 3500k to 6000k cool white and in either GU10 mains or MR16 12v low voltage formats. These run cool, last about 40,000 hours (about 20 years of average domestic use) and are suitable replacements for existing 25w lamps.

However, BriLux V3 6w bulbs are now available (each unit contains 3 separate 2w LEDs, hence the name V3) which compete with halogen lamps in the 35w to 50w range and have a reasonably wide angle at 40 to 60 degrees.

LedFx

Similarly, Australian manufacturer LEDFx provide the Dicro LED MR16 which with 9 watts (a3 x 3w) has the same output as a 35W halogen lamp. These again last in the region of 40,000 hours and you have a choice of red, green, blue, amber, white and warm white.

Sharp Zenigata Series

Ahead of the curve at the moment is the Sharp Zenigata Series which offers brightness levels of 80 lumens per watt (for comparison a regular 40w incandescent bulb outputs about 360 lumens) which allows for an LED light bulb that consumes just 6.7 watts of power to compete head on with a conventional 60w lamp at 540 lumens.

Zenigata LEDs are available in 2,800 to 6,500 Kelvin’s which covers normal white and warm white thru to “high colour rendering” white which is in demand for many applications where accurate depiction of illuminated objects is required. The Zenigata LED is particularly well suited as a direct replacement “retrofit” low energy bulb for existing halogen spotlight fittings.

Cree EvoLux Series

Cree are of course renown for developing and manufacturing LED dies (the electronics etched onto a semiconductor wafer that will eventually become the base of an LED) which then find their way into other manufacturer’s LED product, but they also make their own consumer LED light bulbs.

The Cree EvoLux S and EvoLux R globe LED light bulbs are designed to fully replace normal 100w incandescent bulbs with luminosity of 1,000 lumens of brightness which is very bright indeed. Little wonder than that Cree also offer the dimmable Evolux R variant.

The Cree Evolux R bulb is dimmable using its own built in dimmer that offers three preset light levels and also keeps the last dimmer setting so that it automatically resumes at the correct light level when turned on. As an aside, it’s worth noting that a requirement to dim a low energy LED light bulb down gives a real insight into to how far and fast LED technology has developed just recently.

These Cree EvoLux LED globe retrofit replacements for 100w incandescent light bulbs utilize a single 13w LED chip with a lifespan of 50,000+ hours. This can produce huge savings in energy costs and even allowing for the current high price the Evolux LED delivers an unbeatable return on investment with upto 90% saving on electricity consumption.

The Cree Evolux Series fit most types of normal Edison screw and bayonet mount fittings and there is a choice between warm white at 3000k and cool white at 6000k (most people prefer warm white in a typical domestic situation). There are also EvoLux Sh and EvoLux Rh models with reduced height clearance to suit tight situations where the bulb might otherwise be visible.

For anyone currently looking to buy all round domestic LED lighting (i.e. not LED spotlighting applications) the Cree EvoLux LED globe light bulb is presently one of he best available.

Philips Master LED

Many LED lamps are sold with the clear instruction that they are NOT suitable for dimming. This wasn’t really much of an issue a year or so back since few domestic LEDs were sufficiently bright as to warrant dimming. But with modern high brightness LEDs now hitting the market that’s all changed and dimming capability is a factor for many consumers.

Philips, an established pioneer in the field, now offers the Philips Master LED series which can be controlled by a conventional mechanical dimmer switch (i.e. operated by turning a knob or pushing a slider) and will dim down to 10% of normal brightness.

These are based on a 7 watt LED unit that delivers warm white light equivalent to a 35w conventional lamp with a beam angle of 40 degrees which makes them ideal as direct replacements for the ubiquitous recessed halogen lamp.

Though available in both warm and cool white, the Philips Master Dimmable appears at present to be only available in mains GU10 spotlight format or ES27 (standard Edison Screw) general light bulb format. Nevertheless, it most definitely hints at what’s coming down the line.

Latest LED News

Following on from the record set in 2006 by Cree Inc. with a white LED confirmed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to have an efficiency of 131 lumens per watt, the company announced in November 2008 that it had achieved 161 lumens per watt at a color temperature of 4689K (cool white).

While these results are from Research and Development tests, it won’t be long before production LEDs using these latests developments become available to the domestic consumer market.