If you?re installing lighting for your building, which type is the best for you? You might be on the fence about what type of lighting is right for your needs, so here are the pros and cons that will help you decide among LED high bay light fixtures, halogen bulb replacement, an induction lamp, or whatever you need:
Induction
It was Nikolas Tesla who first demonstrated this type of lighting more than 100 years ago. Induction lighting doesn?t use electrodes or filaments. This means they don?t burn out like other types and can last up to 100,00 hours. They are also highly efficient, offering 60 or 70+ lumens per watt.
The only real cons to induction lighting are the greater cost for installation and the fact that they can generate radio interference if they have the wrong ballast. In a lot of places, that won?t matter, but if you need radios for your business it might be a consideration.
Because of their high efficiency and long life, induction lighting is great in places where lights have to remain on 24 hours a day, such as parking garage lighting.
Halogen
Halogens are really an upgraded form of the old incandescent bulb. They have a tungsten filament that glows incandescent when heated by an electrical current.
The upside to these is the excellent color temperature they provide. They?re useful to highlight gold jewelry or to give your retail store a kind of warm vibe. They?re also quite compact, meaning you can fit them into tight places and store your halogen bulb replacement efficiently. A halogen bulb replacement is also cheap, and they having dimming capability if that’s important to you.
Downsides include their energy inefficiency and the ease with which the components break down. You?ll be pulling out that halogen bulb replacement pretty frequently compared to other types of lighting. They also don?t look that great if you?re going for a more modern look.
LED
LED bulbs produce light when an electrical current is run through them. Interestingly, there is no such thing as a white LED light. They come naturally as blue, red, or green. To make white, you have to either mix colors or cover the light in materials that will convert the light to white.
The pros of LEDs are their efficiency, long life spans, low temperature, and small size. They use only 15% of the energy that a halogen does, while producing 85% more light for the same number of watts. This makes them very useful where bright lights need to be on for long periods, such as for LED roadway lighting or LED parking garage lighting.
The main downside to LEDs is their tendency to emit a lot of blue light, which is useful during the day. But at night, blue light can interfere with human sleep patterns.
Fluorescent
Fluorescent lighting traditionally comes in tubes, and many of us think of the long ugly tubes found in ubiquitous commercial lighting in the past when we hear “fluorescent.” But modern CFLs, or compact fluorescent light, are much smaller.
The pros of these lights are their great energy efficiency, low cost, low heat, and their relatively long life compared to halogen or incandescent bulbs. The downside to CFLs is that they contain mercury, argon, and phosphate, meaning they need very special handling to be recycled. They also can be finicky about working in very hot or moist climates.
Whatever lights you choose, consider what works in your space with your look, the long-term costs, and the effect on the environment that your choice will have.
More research here.