As a Realtor and licensed electrical contractor with a lighting background I am often asked what people can do to make the lighting appear better in their homes. Today is an exciting time for lighting, with the phasing out of incandescent lamps with LED products we are afforded the opportunity to increase lumen output like never before.
Homes built in the 1980's, 1990's and even today are often filled with recessed can lights. Previously recessed can lights were limited to a 75 watt R type lamp (the r stands for reflector, which is a lamp that throws all the light and heat toward the bottom). The problem with incandescent is heat loss as most of the energy consumed by the lamp was burned off in the form of heat, not good in Arizona. The other problem (bigger problem with darker rooms) is you could not install a larger lamp so you had very limited options.
Today the color temperature of LED lighting is spot on to incandescent, you just need to know what to look for. We have the Phillips company to thank for this mostly who really created the LED incandescent replacement lamp. For the best color temperature, find lamps manufactured in the USA, LED's manufactured in China are far behind in technology.
BecauseLED products put out so little heat, you can really increase the lumen output. Remember our recessed can where you could only install a 75 watt lamp (about 1,100 lumens, lumens are measurements of light output, that is one of two critical numbers) with an LED lamp you could easily install a 26 watt LED and increase the lumen output to 2600, more than double the previous lighting output, that will brighten a room.
Just remember, the higher the lumen output, the brighter the light. If you want to match a incandescent look look for try a 2700 kelvin (or color temperature lamp). Remember the higher the color temp the bluer/whiter the light!
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