LED Lamps And Their Advantages Over Traditional Lighting

Rather than using gas and electrical filament, LED lamps use light emitting diodes as their illumination source. Usually the lamps are made up of several LEDs inside a housing structure that can come in many different sizes and shapes in order to fit perfectly into the desired socket.

LEDs were first available in the 60s but were not used all that much. By the time the 70s came around however, they were being used in number of appliances, but not as general lighting because their output was so low. However they were used as indicators of one kind or another quite often.

To start with they came only in colours (blue, yellow, green, red & orange.) It was only in 1993 that the first white LED light was made by combining the lights that were the colour of the spectrum.

Older light bulbs like the ones still used in homes around the world have a very short life compared to LED lamps, and run on a much higher wattage, making LED lamps more cost effective in an energy efficiency sense, in terms of lifespan, and durability as there’s no filament or tube to break.

Other advantages are that unlike fluorescent lamps, LEDs are fully dimmable and also do not contain any hazardous mercury or halogen gases.

At the moment there are a few obstacles that LEDs need to overcome, particularly in the production process. They cannot be manufactured at a low enough price to be distributed among the masses yet. The process of depositing the active semiconductor layers stands to be improved in the future and if it is, then that will improve the overall production rate of LED lamps considerably.

Something that a consumer is more likely to notice is the colour rendering index or CRI of most affordable LED lamps. CRI is a way of measuring how pure and untinged a light source is compared to sunlight, which has a CRI of 100. Most LEDs have a CRI of about seventy which provides a decent enough standard of light for something like a torch, but would not work as a general light source. The LEDs with higher CRI are fairly expensive at the moment and so this is another issue that LED manufacturers need to resolve before LED lamps fully replace traditional light bulbs.