LED Lighting Allows a Greener Footprint for Your Event
May 31, 2010
LED lighting has been available for several years now. You may have experienced LED lighting in the form of a flashlight or the latest in holiday lights. For DJ’s and lighting professionals, LED’s have been available in the form of wash and dance floor lighting for about three or four years. In the past year or so, LED scanners and pinspots have become available. These lights are a great option for reducing the carbon footprint of your event, in effect, making it “greener”.
As someone who is interested in lighting applications, I have watched the evolution of LED lighting with great interest. LED (which is an acronym for “Light Emitting Diode”) has several advantages and disadvantages over traditional incandescent lights. The advantages include:
- very little to no heat emission
- extremely low power consumption (LED pinspots are 3 Watts, as opposed to traditional 30-Watt fixtures)
- virtually eliminates the use of color gels (those colored sheets that are put in front of traditional white par can lights to give them color).
WOW! LED lighting sounds great! Throw all the old par cans away and call the supply store, right?
Well, no. Not yet.
Like any emerging technology, LED lighting is evolving. That leads us to some of its disadvantages:
- LED light is not as “warm” as incandescent or halogen light.
- LED lights have the ability to mix millions of colors, but they fall short in providing rich, golden amber hues and deep, saturated colors. These colors are high-demand colors and must be achieved in the traditional method.
- An inexpensive traditional par can ($20.00) will put out more light than a light costing 7 times (and as much as 15 times) more.
Luckily, in the past year, several advancements have been made in the LED fixtures available to lighting professionals. Better quality, larger LED’s allow for brighter and truer, “hue-free” color-mixing and white-only professional LED fixtures allow lighting professionals to use traditional color gels to achieve the perfect hue.
At Luminous Evenings Special Event Lighting, we use a mix of traditional and LED fixtures to achieve the perfect look for your event. But now, we are able to offer virtually incandescent-free lighting to green brides. The choice is yours.
