Ceiling lights don’t get enough credit for what they do for the ascetic of the room. Interior designer, Nate Berkus, has said that before you begin remodeling your home; first consider what impact changing up the lighting situation would have on your current or future design plans. Given how big a role ceiling lights play in lighting indoor spaces and creating ambiance, we thought it would prove useful to not only put together a shopping guide, but also to give you a breakdown as to which light source is best (spoiler: it’s LED) and how it differs from other light sources. Without further ado, here is this week’s guide.
Ceiling lights work by transmitting electricity from a light fixture to a light bulb(s) and then shining it through the fitter shade or glass to provide a given space with its light source.
The way the light compliments the room is largely determined by the styles of ceiling light you choose to install. Interior designers classify lighting into three main categories, ambient lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting.
To get an idea of how these types of light work to bring a room together, you can think of them as members of a band.
Ambient lighting: Ambient lighting is like the drummer of the band -extremely important yet underappreciated. It provides the background that the other lighting components build off of.
Task lighting: Task lighting is like the lead vocalist or lead guitarist. They shine the brightest, serve a specialized purpose, and never go unnoticed. These lights concentrate on a smaller area for a certain task, like reading or cooking, and often have ornamental or stylish fixtures.
Accent lighting: Accent lighting is like the bassist. They’re the lights that subtly highlight a focal point of a room and add depth. No band is complete without the bassist, just like no lighting arrangement is complete without accent lighting.
In practice, you can use downlight ceiling lights as your ambient light source as they evenly distribute light throughout the room and provide a more neutral and utilitarian source of light. Then you could have ceiling spotlights as your task lighting above the sofa or in the kitchen for when you’re relaxing or cooking up some dinner. Lastly, you could make use of recessed lights to highlight your wall decorations, plants, or a cabinet.
The type of light bulb is also an integral part of how ceiling lights work as they ultimately supply the functionality and aesthetic effect of the light in a given space.
Light emitted from the light bulbs in your ceiling fixtures will have the most notable effect on the look and feel of a given space due to it being emitted from above and therefore has the widest light radius out of any other light source in the room. Consequently, ceiling lights provide the “background layer” of light and all other sources build on it, so the light from your ceiling fixtures will play the biggest role in determining the light color of the room as well as its brightness, which ultimately delivers ambiance to a given space. This is why it is important to understand that not all light produced by light bulbs is the same. Different light bulbs produce different color temperatures which influence how our eyes perceive the objects in a given space. For example, the light emitted by incandescent or halogen light bulbs tends to have a lower colour temperature, so their light has a more yellowish tint. LED lights on the hand, have the highest color temperature so their light is not tinted with any other colors and is the closest to natural sunlight.
From a practical perspective, the type of light bulb used in a ceiling light fixture will also determine a non-negligible portion of your electricity bill because of how often we use them. We did a calculation for ceiling light power consumption to determine how much money it costs to run ceiling lights with different kinds of light bulbs for 5 hours a day. This calculation is based on the average price of kWh (kilowatt-hour) in the United States ($0.13 /kWh as of 2021) and the power consumed by standard light bulbs for home ceiling light use, measured in watts. We found that it costs $14.24 per year for halogen and incandescent light bulbs, $3.32 per year for CFL (compact fluorescent light), and $1.66 per year for LED light bulbs.
LED light bulbs are the best kind of light bulb to use for your ceiling light, regardless of the function or ambiance you’re going for. LED light bulbs have a slightly higher initial cost than other types of light bulbs, but they last the longest, are the most energy-efficient, are dimmable, are the healthiest for our eyes, and don’t emit heat. At the end of the day, LED light bulbs are the best type of light bulb for ceiling lights.
LED ceiling light manufacturers produce two different formats of LED ceiling light fixtures: fixtures that are designed with a light bulb socket which is compatible with most types of light bulbs and fixtures that are designed with an integrated LED light source. Both formats are great, although ceiling lights with an integrated LED light source may cost more, you will likely not need to worry about replacing them since LED lights have such a long life span.
You can also take it up a notch by using LED Smart Bulbs for your ceiling lights. Just like regular light bulbs, LED smart bulbs can fit into any light fixture. They come with a plethora of features that improve upon your standard light setup and make using the light much more convenient. My personal favourite feature of LED smart bulbs is that they can be configured to work by voice command. Rather than fumble around with switches, dials, timers, dimmers, etc. I can just tell my virtual assistant what I want it to do and it’s taken care of. It’s a really cool feature that can benefit anyone. I suppose one disadvantage to LED smart bulbs is that setting them up isn’t as simple as just screwing the bulb into the fixture, there are also the added steps of linking them with your virtual assistant or hub, there may be an app you need to install and configure, and so on. All said and done, it should take less than 20 minutes, and in the end, it’s way worth it.
LED light bulbs are made of small diodes constructed with a semiconductor material. This semiconductor material is layered with every other layer possessing an excess of electrons which will overflow to the adjacent semiconductor layer once the diodes are powered. Power is delivered to the diodes by gold and/or silver wiring which are very efficient conductors and are easy for manufacturers to work with.
When the diodes are powered, the electrons will begin consistent motion from one semiconductor layer to the next, causing electronic excitation, which is the most energy efficient process that creates light.
This is totally different and much more energy efficient compared with how other light bulbs work. Other types of light bulbs are lit by having electricity heat up specially made wires that emit light when hot. To produce this heat, much more energy is required and must be applied constantly in order for the light bulb to work. In fact, incandescent light bulbs waste around 90% of input energy through heat.
Another key difference between LED light bulbs and other light bulbs is the type of power supply they use. LED light bulbs require DC (directional current) as opposed to AC (alternating current). LEDs use DC because they require a constant current in order to stay illuminated. If you use AC as your power supply, you may notice that your LED ceiling lights flashing on and off, flickering, or strobing. Luckily this flashing is easily remedied by using an LED driver and can be totally avoided by ensuring that your LED ceiling light is compatible with your control circuits and power supply.
The production of LED light bulbs is a scientifically complicated and high-tech process – we’ve come a long way from platinum filaments and vacuum bulbs. Firstly, a semiconductor material is made of a crystalline compound comprising arsenic, gallium, and/or phosphor inside a high pressure chamber.
Once the crystalline is made, it is cut into semiconductor wafers and undergoes a cleaning and smoothing process in preparation for the next step.
Next, additional layers are added to the semiconductor wafers. “Impurities” like nickel or zinc that are essential to the conduction of electricity are used in this step of the process.
Finally, the semiconductor material is connected to gold and/or silver wiring and the assigned package design which is made of transparent plastic as it doesn’t shatter like glass, and the LED light is ready to shine.
This is an extreme oversimplification of how LED light bulbs are made, but these are the essential fundamentals of the process.
Our living rooms serve multiple purposes from just relaxing, to entertaining guests, and even doing work for some people. In many ways, the living room is the face of the home and it represents who we are as homeowners and ceiling lights play a crucial role in this. Furthermore, the lights in the living room usually get the most use for the majority of people; so for these reasons, LED ceiling lights for living room are the way to go, as we’ve previously discussed in this article. But why stop there? A Smart LED ceiling light for your living room can provide so much more customization, convenience, and will save you more money on your power bill.
Tasmor’s Smart LED Ceiling Light is ideal for people who want to get into smart home technology as it is super easy to install, compatible with Alexa and Google, and can also be controlled through the “SmartLife” app which has a great, user-friendly interface. In addition, all the light’s functions, like dimming, turning on/off, and the timer can be controlled by voice command.
The light itself has some of the highest color temperatures you can get from a home light, which results in ample, yet soft and natural feeling light. As for the light fixture, it has a neutral and minimalist design which would suit most living room aesthetics. The PMMA shade on the fixture ensures that there is no glare, and further provides softness and warmth to the light emitted from the LED.
And with that, we conclude this week’s blog entry. Ceiling lights have a big impact on the look and feel of a room’s design, as well as its functionality. We established that the most important component of the ceiling light is the type of light bulb it uses. Remember that LED light bulbs are the best kind of light bulb for ceiling lights because they have the longest life span, save energy, and have the closest light color to natural sunlight. Additionally, you can take advantage of Smart technology and install a Smart LED ceiling light to really optimize the rooms in your home. And that wraps things up – we hope this week’s blog proved useful to you in your home improvement journey.
