The Advantages Of Installing LED Lighting In Modern Kitchens

There are many reasons for wanting to use low powered or eco-friendly lighting. Maybe you feel that 'green' issues are important and that by using lighting that reduces your carbon footprint, you will minimise the harm to the environment. You may simply want to reduce your electricity consumption because the cost of lighting can be a major proportion of an electricity bill.
Here is a case study that involves one aspect of fitting a new kitchen into the breakfast/kitchen of an old property. It contains issues that are relevant for anyone planning a similar sort of project.
With any new kitchen, the designer is going to say at some point in the planning stage, "if we're fitting a new kitchen we'll need to upgrade the lighting". The kitchen is at the heart of the modern household and it has to be a place where family members are happy to congregate for meals or just spend time together. Modern lighting means that it is possible to add to the ambiance of the kitchen by picking out features, highlighting food preparation areas and generally setting the mood, making it an attractive area to meet and eat.
In our case study, the old kitchen was lit by three R63 60watt spotlights in a triple fitting. These were replaced by eight recessed GU10 halogen ceiling lights at 35 watts each. The power consumption was increased from 180 watts to 280 watts which wasn't at all helpful. Worse still, in the dining area of the breakfast/kitchen the kitchen table was originally illuminated by a single 100 watt light bulb on a pendant light fitting with a shade, which was a little gloomy to say the least. This was changed for nine recessed GU10 halogen ceiling lights at 35 watts each thus increasing the power consumption from 100 watts to 315 watts at a stroke. Hardly an eco-friendly move.
OK, the kitchen and dining area were now brightly lit, but the power consumption had increased from 280 watts to a whopping 595 watts.
Luckily, alternative bulbs in the form of LED versions of the GU10 lights are readily available these days, using just 3.0 watts per bulb. So the halogen lights were swapped in favour of LED lights, which meant that the power consumption in the kitchen was now 24 watts, and in the dining area it was 27 watts. Overall, that was just 51 watts!
Although the LED GU10 units are more expensive to buy than the halogen equivalents, there was another plus factor in addition to the drastically reduced power consumption. This came in the length of bulb life.
It may have been cheaper to buy replacements for spotlights and filament bulbs in the previous kitchen, but they had to be replaced regularly. Manufacturers' figures revealed the fact that spotlights have an average life of 1000 hours. This meant that if you kept them on constantly, you would be replacing them every 41 days.
Halogen light bulbs are slightly more expensive to buy, but they have a longer life span. GU10s are rated at an average of 2,500 hours, meaning that if you kept them on constantly you would expect to change them three times a year.
LED lights perform even better having an average lifespan of 50,000 hours. That's an amazing 5.7 years of constant use. Now of course, no one leaves the lights on all the time (anyone with teenagers at home will probably disagree!), so you would expect the LEDs to continue to make savings in power consumption for a very long time.


Paul Trafford is employed by Lark and Larks, a leading UK supplier of fitted kitchens and replacement kitchen doors. Lark and Larks also supplies kitchen storage solutions and accessories, including a wide range of halogen and LED kitchen lights.