We've got houses on our mind (I suppose it's because we're in the midst of a house-build at the moment.) We are currently working on wiring our new house, and the question came up of "what lights are we going to choose for each area, and what are we going to use to light each area?" Being an LED company, we felt it would almost be dishonorable to put anything but LEDs in our home. Here is what we're putting in our new home which may offer some new ideas as to how you can integrate LEDs into your home.
Aside from us being an LED company, LEDs in the home comes down to one thing: lighting costs. We look forward to fully converting yet another one of our buildings on our farm to LEDs to help lower that monthly electric bill.
In the kitchen we are installing can lights. This is a great place to integrate LEDs, but the color temperature is what's going to be key here. If you go with a higher color temperature, it's going to give a more "sterile" feel. We are looking for a more "warm" feel, so we are going with 3500-4000k. We are also installing under and over-cabinet LED light strips; this is an easy addition that can add not only extra light but an extra ambiance within the kitchen. It will give us multiple options for light sources depending on what activity is taking place.
Since our kitchen and living room is one large room, we decided to carry the can lights throughout the entire area. One of the exciting things about this is that all of them will be dimmable, so while we will most likely go with that warmer color temperature, we can lower the light to break up the areas.
We are utilizing our T8 Integrated LED lights in our laundry room and our basement. Personally, in the laundry room, I don't care about ambiance, I want to be able to see. We are going with our stock color of 5000k, which is a natural daylight color.
In the extra bedrooms, we are having the fan as our primary light source, which will be screw-in LED bulbs. In the master bedroom, we are using multiple different LED fixtures with a lower light temperature, and the bathrooms will feature screw-in bulbs around the 5000k temperature.
One of the more exciting areas is outside. We are going to be using both our Solar LED lights and our Mini Wallpacks. These are both very easy to install, and very versatile as to where we can place them for maximum security lighting.
In the garage, we will be using our Cutoff Wallpacks for our exterior security lighting and will be using our Double Row Integrated LED for the main light source within our garage. Another light we had added in our old garage that we will be using in the new one is our T8 Integrated LED motion-sensing light. We put this right on the ceiling above our vehicles and whenever the garage door opens the light automatically turns on, eliminating the need to turn on all the lights when quickly entering or exiting our cars.
Next time you have a bulb go out or if you decide to renovate, think of ways you can utilize LEDs into your home to help cut back your home lighting costs; the life of LEDs is also much longer than typical lighting found within homes today, which will prolong the need to change that light for years to come.