The Time is Right to Consider LED Lighting

Many of our clients are looking to upgrade the lighting in their worship spaces. For some, the goal is to reduce energy and lamp replacement costs. Others want to enhance their worship presentation or improve the look of their video recordings. 

Theatrical and Architectural lighting manufacturers have jumped full force onto the LED bandwagon. Heavy competition has forced prices down, so now is a great time to consider improving your church’s lighting. 

Here are a couple of notable tidbits…

• LED lights are now as bright as conventional incandescent or arc-lamp fixtures. 
• LED lights have finally reached a color rendering quality that accurately reveal fabric colors and skin tones. Some are better than others, Torrence can help you choose the right fixtures for your application.
• LEDs are dimmed by flashing the lamp on and off. Special fixtures are chosen for video recording applications so the camera does not “see” the rapid flicker of the lamps.
• LEDs use less electricity, run cooler (with corresponding HVAC savings), and last much longer than conventional lamps (see information below on L70 ratings).

LEDs compared to Incandescent Lamps

• When an incandescent or discharge (arc) lamp burns out, it no longer produces any light. It has effectively reached the end of its useful life.
• Under perfect environmental conditions, most incandescent stage lamps have a lamp life of around 2,000 hours. Arc discharge stage lamps usually have a lamp life of around 200 hours.
• LEDs don’t die suddenly, and rarely do LEDs “burn out.” Instead, they slowly get dimmer as they age.

L70 – What does it mean?

• L70 is the new standard for the lamp life of an LED.
• A LED’s L70 rating is the approximate hours that an LED lamp will run until it dims to 70% of its initial light intensity.
• So if you buy a fixture with an L70 rating of 50,000 hours, then your fixture should last that long with 70%-100% of intensity. 50,000 hours is 2,083 days, or 5.78 years running 24/7.
• Most church fixtures are typically on a few hours a day and a few days a week. So you may never have to change a lamp again!