LED Lamps

There are direct LED replacement lamps for most popular trypes of traditional lamps. High wattage halogen lamps are a challenge to replace owing to their compact size . It is not possible to make LED lamps as bright as high wattage at the same size. LED lamps require good heat control and that tends to make them bigger than the lamps they replace.

We have an extensive range of products and the replacements should be straight forward when using the filters. If you cannot see an obvious replacement contact us for a recommendation.

There are three main challanges in replacing traditional lamps.

1. Dimming

2. Electrical Characteristics

3. Size

1. Traditional lamps dim just by reducing the voltage. It is a physical change that is both predicitable and straightforward. Leds are an electrical product on a circuit board and it has to look at the incoming wave form and try to work out what is required. As a result you my need top replace your old dimmer and buy an LED dimmer to get dimming to work correctly.

2. When replacing fluorescent tubes with LED tubes you have to choose if you want to leave the electronics in place or remove the electronics and run the tubes off the mains. The latter will require the services of an electrician to re-wire the fitting. Using LED tubes with the existing gear isn't always guarenteed to work and so we reccomed direct-to-mains as the most reliable option.

3. LEDs are often larger than the lamps that they replace but not always. Some traditional halogen lamps are very compact and it is not possible to replicate these at this point but LEDs are becoming more efficent which means that they can be made smaller. therefore it is worthwhile chjecking every so often if the ideal LED has become available.

The most difficult lamps to replace are low wattage metal halide lamps. There are LEDs claiming to be LED replacements of these compact metal halide lamps, if however you check the lumen output they are often 1/10 of the output of the lamps that they replace and so are very misleading in this respect.

Replacing sodium and high wattage metal halide lamps with "corn" lamps may result in a drop in lumen levels.  We do not quote "equivalent" values for these lamps because most of the claims are bogus. The corn lamps are good lamps but you need to compare the lumens of the LEDs to the lumens of the original lamps, this isn't always a problem as some times reducing the level of illuminance is not a problem. The best solution when replacing either high wattage sodium or metal halide lamps is to replace the fittings with dedicated led fixtures as these will be designed to direct the light directly at the subject and will not use inefficent reflectors and the losses that entails.