Led Downlights vs Halogen - Wattage
For wattage, you want your downlights to be energy saving yet still produce a high beam. For this reason, we encourage you to use LED downlights. The average 10W LED downlight can produce a beam twice as bright as halogen that use up to 55W. The best option in terms of energy saving can range from as low as 4.5 watts to 14 watts in LED.
Colour Temperature
As a general guide, when choosing LED downlights for a room that tends to get hot e.g. a kitchen or laundry, cool white is ideal. However, if you want warmth and intimacy in your space e.g. a living room or bedroom, warmer downlights are a better option than their cool white counterpart.
We recommend a natural white 4000K as a good all-rounder. It's cool, clean and feels warm but doesn't overpower your eyes - it's like you have natural skylight coming through the ceiling. Below is a photo so you can see the difference in colour temperature.
What are Lumens?
It used to be you could look at the watts on a light bulbs packaging and determine the brightness of the light. This is still the case for halogen and fluorescent lights, but for LED lights the wattage is generally always low because of the energy saving technology. As a result, we now use lumens (lm) to understand the brightness of the LED lights. Lumens measure the total amount of visible LED light from a bulb. The higher the lumens the brighter the LED light.
Energy Efficiency - Lumens Per Watts
When choosing downlights the LED option is a balance between efficiency (watts) and brightness (lumens). For example, if you usually use a 60-watt incandescent bulb, you now probably want to choose a LED downlight that uses 8 to 12 watts and has a lumen rating of 800 for the same amount of illumination.
However, if you're confused about lumens don't worry! Below is a chart that gives you a guide to the brightness of lumens per watts as compared with incandescent bulbs.
Downlight Beam Angle
The beam angle is the amount of light that spreads from the light and can be measured in degrees. Most have a beam angle of 45° because they are recessed. By contrast, a regular light bulb would have a 360° beam angle.
Because they are recessed, we recommend selecting downlights with a wider beam (of 60°) if you want soft diffuse lighting e.g. in the living room. If you are looking at downlights for the kitchen, however, a narrower beam (of 25°) angle is preferable because it will give you a concentrated light, perfect for when you need to illuminate surfaces and focus on smaller details within the room.
Whatever the room size it always looks better with pools of light instead of glaring light in your eyes, it will create much more ambience in your space.
Generally, if you're unsure about which beam angle to choose, anything from 60 to 120 degrees works fine in the majority of cases. Below is a photo to help you visual beam angle.
Downlight Spacing for Beam Angles
Before installing, make sure you think of beam angle when considering how far apart to space them.
If you are using a wider beam you can generally space the downlights 1.2 to 1.5 metres. If you are using a concentrated beam light, try spacing them 1 metre away from each other.
When you install the recessed downlights in your room, calculate the total needed then space them exactly the same apart throughout the room.
Where should recessed lights be placed in living room
Colour Rendering Index (CRI)
CRI means the light source's ability to reveal the colour of objects faithfully in comparison with natural sunlight. The index is measured from 0-100, with a perfect 100 indicating that colours under light appear the same as they would under natural sunlight. Generally, a CRI of 80 - 90 will be within the range of accurate colour rendering.
If prefer to have your lights rendering beautiful, vibrant tones across the full-colour spectrum we recommend a high CRI (90+) in combination with a colour temperature that's middle of the range (4000K).
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Downlight Lifespans
This, of course, depends on the type you invest in. Halogen downlights last for 2,000 hours on average. Many find that they replace the majority of their halogen globes within a 12-18 month period.
For LED downlights, the lifespan is 50,000 hours, which is around 27 years if it's switched on 5 hours a day. As you can see these are far more cost-effective in the long run.