You might have a fair few incandescent, halogen or fluorescent bulbs at your home or workplace – whether those bulbs are in lighting fixtures or left in a storage space, such as in a cupboard or on a shelf. Still, for how much longer will those bulbs in your property continue to work?
All three of these bulb types produce light by creating excessive heat. In this respect, they differ significantly from more modern LED bulbs, which each use multiple light-emitting diodes to produce light. As a result, LED light bulbs are easily the most energy-efficient of these four types of lighting.
Hence, they have been credited with lasting much longer, too. Studies have evaluated that a single LED bulb is said to generate light for an impressive 50,000 hours in total. The respective life expectancies for a fluorescent bulb and an incandescent bulb are just 8,500 hours and 1,000 hours.
Nonetheless, research has found that the actual life of a working LED light bulb can be much shorter than the anticipated lifespan advertised by the manufacturer. This can often be attributed to the quality of the bulb. Cheaper bulbs are prone to poor internal soldering work or poor-quality LED chips. It is much more likely to fail before its advertised lifespan if this is the case.
So, while the general consensus is that LEDs certainly outclass incandescent, fluorescent and halogen bulbs in functional longevity, you might remain curious about exactly how long you can realistically keep using a given LED bulb before needing to replace it.
How Long Do LED Bulbs Last?
The short answer: a lot longer than you would probably expect. In the old days of using incandescent bulbs as standard, you would have been lucky to get a 10,000-hour lifespan out of each of these lights. This is 20% of the 50,000 hour lifespan mentioned above for an LED bulb.
However, research indicates that different LED bulbs can vary significantly in their actual lifespans. In independent testing, numerous LED bulbs have been found to eke out less than 10,000 hours of light – despite claiming to be capable of lasting at least 15,000 or even, in the case of some bulbs, 50,000 hours.
Therefore, it could pay immensely for you to be picky about where exactly you source your LED lighting. Here at Vision Lighting, we are highly discerning about the quality of lighting products we stock in our Leeds warehouse – and this is why, for the LED bulbs in our own range, we claim a life expectancy of up to 50,000 hours. As we are committed to delivering premium products, we consistently ensure that any product we do not manufacture ourselves is produced by reputable manufacturers and ensure that they have a quality management system in place.
To put this stated lifespan into perspective, it means that, if you do choose us as your supplier of a new LED bulb, you could find yourself regularly using it for more than five years. In practice, this bulb could even near or exceed a 10-year lifespan depending on how often the light is used.
Choosing LED Lights As A More Efficient And Long-Lasting Option Compared To Traditional Alternatives
Compared to fluorescent, halogen and incandescent lights, LED lights consume far less power despite producing an identical – or even improved – lumens output. This is largely because LED lights are made in a completely different – and more technologically advanced – way.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines a lumen as “a unit for measuring the amount of light something produces”. Meanwhile, the earlier-mentioned series of Live Science figures reveal that it can take just one LED bulb to supply 20 million lumen-hours. Three fluorescent bulbs can be necessary for generating this lumen output, while 22 incandescent bulbs could be required for the same end.
The main takeaway is clear: an LED bulb uses power much more efficiently compared to a standard bulb. This discrepancy helps to explain why incandescent bulbs have been increasingly phased out in the UK since 2009, while the same has been true of halogen bulbs since 2018.
Meanwhile, the UK Government intends to ban sales of high-energy fluorescent light bulbs from September 2023 onwards. In June 2021, Energy Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan enthused: “By helping ensure electrical appliances use less energy but perform just as well, we’re saving households money on their bills and helping tackle climate change.”
According to the Climate Group charity, if the world switched entirely to energy-efficient LED lighting technology, carbon dioxide emissions could be reduced by over 1.4m tonnes.
But Why Do My LED Bulbs Burn Out So Fast?
You might be accustomed to using incandescent bulbs that stop working much earlier than you had expected. An incandescent bulb works by heating up a filament sufficiently for it to glow, resulting in – yes – light. However, doing this regularly to a delicate filament leads it to eventually break or burn out.
Even just turning an incandescent bulb on and off can damage it, but the same fortunately isn’t true with LED bulbs, as these have no filament and work very differently to their incandescent counterparts. As a result, they don’t generate such intense heat.
When a traditional bulb stops working, it does so abruptly. In contrast, a LED bulb nears the end of its life much more subtly – as, over time, the bulb’s individual light-emitting diodes start failing one by one. Hence, the lighting’s brightness will gradually decrease over time rather than suddenly disappear in one fell swoop, as would happen with an incandescent bulb.
Admittedly, this rather complicates the question of how exactly the actual life of a working bulb should be measured. You might decide that a LED bulb no longer meets your practical needs once it has dropped to a particular level of dimness – even if that light still technically, in a rudimentary way, ‘works’. This would be your cue to buy a replacement LED light bulb.
Choosing LED Bulbs At Vision Lighting
As roughly two-thirds of all light bulbs sold in Britain are now LED lights, you could understandably be indecisive about which of the many LEDs on the market you ought to buy. Therefore, we are very careful about what LED bulbs we supply for our customers.
Our product range in this category has been strategically put together to ensure we cover a wide range of needs but don’t overwhelm people with more choice than they have time to sort through. That way, we can help you to quickly choose the best-looking lighting for your needs.
So, if – for example – you would like to illuminate your kitchen or bathroom in a suitably understated way, you could feel drawn towards this 5W GU10 LED bulb that is capable of emitting light in a warm white while remaining housed within waterproof fittings.
However, if you want to bathe a particularly large indoor space – such as a living room or dining room – in light, you may prefer this Kanlux XLED LED filament bulb due to its all-glass design and 320-degree beam angle, which together allow light to be spread in all directions.
What if you long for lighting that feels traditional despite incorporating modern technology? You could opt for one of our five GLS A60 bulbs, which can look especially good in heritage properties.
Email Or Call Our LED Lighting Specialists For Further Guidance
Ultimately, the exact lifespan of a functioning LED bulb can depend on many different things. Though many LED light bulbs are rated as lasting in the region of the expected hours, you might – in practice – be able to get much more than this out of the next LED bulb you purchase.
One major reason for this is that the LED bulbs in our own stock have life ratings of up to 50,000 hours. There is also the fact that the exact time frame for a usable LED bulb can depend heavily on what you would define as ‘usable’ for your particular practical requirements.
Given that the LED bulbs we offer are of the highest quality, you could find that the average lifespan of any of these bulbs you do buy from us feels even longer than it actually is – as these are very much low-maintenance products.
If you’ve got only a bit of time to make your buying decision, rest assured that you can email us via info@vision-lighting.co.uk or give us a call on 01132 799 745 to ask for advice. A member of our staff can help you to decide which of our LED lighting options would be the most appropriate for you.