If you have made the choice to upgrade to LED lights in your home, you have taken a step in the right direction for reducing your home’s impact on the environment. However, to get the best performance from your LEDs, you must purchase the right type of lights. We’re partnering with LED lighting experts LEDified to offer 6 steps that guarantee you’ll choose the right LED for your home.

How to Choose the Right LED for Your Home

1. Choose brightness based on lumens, not watts.
2. Pick soft, neutral or cool white light.
3. Select a bulb made for dimmers if needed.
4. Keep in mind “beam angle.”
5. Pay attention to ambience, accents and tasks.
6. Use a coupon, get a utility rebate.

Choose the brightness of your LED bulbs based on lumens, not on watts.

When purchasing LEDs, many people make the mistake of judging the bulb’s brightness on the amount of watts on the label. The brightness of incandescent bulbs is linked to watts. However, watts are a measure of how much energy a bulb draws. Because LED lights draw less energy and don’t correlate to brightness, the metric that is used for the brightness in LED lights is lumens.

Compare how many watts it takes an incandescent bulb to the amount an LED needs to generate the same level of brightness:

Pick Your Bulb Depending on What Kind of Light You Need

There are 3 types of brightness to consider when you are purchasing an LED light bulb: soft, neutral, or cool.

Soft white LED light bulbs.

These are the standard color of LED light bulbs. The color emitted from this bulb is yellowish and provides a warmer color. They’re nice in living rooms, bathrooms, family rooms and bedrooms.

Neutral White LED light bulbs.

These light bulbs are ideal to use in task-oriented environments, like a kitchen or workshop.

Cool White (also known as daylight)

These lights lumens are good for a porch, garage or even a closet.

Select the right bulb for your dimmers.

Dimmers have traditionally been used with incandescent light bulbs to change their brightness by adjusting the voltage going into the light bulb. The same doesn’t apply to LED lights because when the applied or average voltage drops below the minimum voltage that’s required to power the LED, the LED light won’t turn on. Furthermore, the LEDs might flicker, hum, or buzz. Conventional LEDs will only work at a 100% brightness level.

If you want to have the option to dim your LED lights, you must purchase LED lights that have the circuitry to perform the dimmable function. Some tips for purchasing LEDs include:

• Check the label to see if the LED light is dimmable.
• Although some LED lights will work with incandescent dimmers, it is recommended that you upgrade to LED-specific dimmers.

If you cannot see any information about dimming on the label, do not purchase the LED light for a dimmer fixture.

Get your desired beam angle.

One of the great things about investing in LED lighting is that they can provide different beam angles. You can check the labelling for the LED’s beam angle lens. If you want your lights to shine with like a spotlight, you will probably opt for a 20-degree lens. However, if you would prefer a wide-angle lens, then a 60-degree lens would be better. Keep in mind that the intensity of the light may be lower, the wider the beam angle is. These types of bulbs are ideal for lighting up entire rooms.

Select the right lights for ambience, accents and tasks.

There are three main ways to think about lighting in your home: ambient, task, and accent lighting.

Ambient

Ambient lighting provides the overall illumination for a room by lighting up the entire space.

Task

This type of lighting illuminates an area for a specific function. For example, a table lamp shines light on what you’re reading; a bathroom sconce might be helpful for applying make-up. Before you choose any light, be clear on what task it needs to illuminate.

Accent

Accent lighting draws attention to a particular object such as artwork, sculptures, bookcases and plants.

Get an LED!

LED lights are a great investment because they can last a decade or longer and save the cost of buying the bulb many times over in reduced utility bills.

Use the advice provided by LED lighting experts LEDified to select the right LED light bulbs for your home.

NOTE: Sponsors like LEDified allow us to provide expert content at no cost to you. Our editorial opinions remain our own.

The post 6 Steps That Guarantee You’ll Choose the Right LED For Your Home appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Sunday, November 1, you’ll be turning back your clocks and turning on your lights a lot earlier to deal with the longer, darker nights. It’s the perfect time to replace the energy-wasting bulbs in the lights you use most with the best energy-efficient light bulbs available: compact fluorescents and LEDs.

Here’s a guide to help you figure out what bulb to put where – and how much money you’ll save when you do.

Download Here

NOTE: This guide is reprinted with permission from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Ecova.com. 

You can find LEDs and CFLs in hardware stores and big box stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s. We sell a variety in our Big Green Purse Amazon store, too. If you are willing to pay a little more upfront for LEDs, you won’t regret it because they’ll last so long. Whatever you buy, make sure they’re ENERGY STAR certified. Here are 3 worth taking a look at:

3-Pack from Feit Electric – They’re dimmable, last over 22 years, and use only 9.6 watts to replace a 60 watt bulb.

Hyperikon LED – Buy them singly or in a 4-pack. Also a 60-watt equivalent, with a soft white glow.

SunSun Lighting LED – This is a 40 watt equivalent that uses only 6.5 watts, so it will save more than 80% of the energy a traditional incandescent uses. It promises 25,000 hours of warm light.

The post How To Pick the Best Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs For Your Home or Apt. appeared first on Big Green Purse.

What is an LED?

 LED stands for “light emitting diodes,” semiconductor devices that produce visible light when an electrical current is passed through them. This technology makes them far superior to incandescent bulbs, which waste a huge amount of energy generating light by using electricity to heat a metal filament until becomes “white” hot.  Until LEDs started moving into the market, compact fluorescents were the most energy-efficient option for consumers. CFLs are still a good choice, because they’re 75% more efficient than incandescents. But LEDs are better yet, because they’re even more efficient than CFLs, durable, versatile and so longlasting. Read on to learn more about these benefits.

LED Benefits

I have many LEDs in my home. Here’s what I like about them.

Durability: LEDs last a really long time. One LED can last anywhere from 5 to 10 years, with some bulbs lasting as long as 100,000 hours – 11 years of continuous operation, or 22 years of 50% operation.  That means I don’t have to spend a lot of time changing bulbs. This is especially useful for hard-to-reach locations, like ceiling fixtures, wall sconces, and porch lights. Even if an incandescent lasts 1,000 hours, the LED lasts 100 times longer!

Save money: LEDs help reduce my electricity bill. Though an LED is more expensive to purchase, in the long run, it is much cheaper to operate. A quick review of prices at my local hardware store showed LEDs on sale for as little as $5.97 a bulb. The cheapest incandescents cost around a dollar a bulb. Let’s do the math: For an extra $5, you get a bulb that lasts 100 times as long! That’s almost $100 saved in light bulb costs, let alone the money you’ll save on your electricity bill. Imagine if you replace 10 incandescents in your home with 10 LEDs. You’ll save $1,000 just in light bulb purchases. That’s pretty hard to beat.

 Bonus: Many utility companies now offer their customers discounts when they purchase LEDs. Sunlite, the sponsors of the post, is giving away $1,000 of free LED products to one consumer who enters their Facebook contest here.  Anyone can enter!

 LEDs are cool. Yes, they’re “cool,” if you mean hip. But more importantly, they’re cool to operate. Unlike incandescent or halogen light bulbs, LEDs don’t radiate heat. This is especially important in the summer, when air conditioning sends electricity costs through the roof.

 No mercury. Compact fluorescents contain a very small amount of mercury. While usually not dangerous at home, CFLs add this toxic chemical to our landfills when they’re thrown away. LEDs are safe to use, and safe to dispose of.

 ENERGY STAR certified. The best LEDs available are also those that meet the high standards for performance and quality set by the Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program. You know from reading this blog that I’m a big fan of ENERGY STAR products because they are well-made, deliver reliable service, and help me save energy and money. ENERGY STAR LEDs meet more than 20 separate industry standards and procedures and have been tested by independent third-parties to meet their claims.

 Nice light. LEDs come in a variety of brightness and color options. Choose soft white/warm for kitchens, dining and living rooms, bright white for bathrooms, hallways and offices, and daylight for security, garages, and laundry and utility rooms.

 Versatility.  LED bulbs can be used in pretty much any lighting fixture you have. Living room table and floor lamps, kitchen and bathroom ceiling lights, recessed fixtures, porch lights, desk lights. Once you decide to go LED, you shouldn’t have a problem finding the right bulb to fit your need.

In the average U.S. home, lighting accounts for about 20% of the electric bill. Why not cut that down significantly by installing LEDs? You’ll start saving money immediately. And won’t it be great not to have the hassle of changing bulbs so often?

NOTE: Thanks to the Sunlite lighting company for sponsoring this post. Sponsors enable us to bring you expert content at no cost to you. Our editorial opinions remain our own.

The post LED Lights Brighten Rooms, Save Time & Money appeared first on Big Green Purse.

All of which makes for a very exciting time to have a new environmental book out – especially one that aims to make sense of what’s “green” versus what’s being “greenwashed.”  That’s the question I’ve been asked most frequently, especially during the dozens of radio interviews I’ve done since the book’s pub date March 1. Everyone wants to do something to make a difference. Not everyone knows where to start, or what purchases are really worth the money. Words like “natural,” “biodegradable,” and “eco-friendly” throw people for a loop. Do they really mean the product or service deserves Mother Nature’s green star? Not necessarily, and a big part of my job right now involves directing shoppers to certified goods that actually live up to their marketing claims.

I’ve been impressed that so many people have turned out to my book signings – given that another big concern for people who want to go green is lack of time! Most people don’t realize that being “eco” can actually simplify your life –  sometimes I need to roll out the light bulb example to prove my point (a compact fluorescent light bulb lasts ten times as long as an incandescent, so put one in and forget about it for seven years…).

Speaking of light bulbs, perhaps what’s most gratifying about the book is watching the proverbial light bulb go on behind people’s eyes when they realize how much clout their consumer power has. This has been especially true for women, most of whom haven’t realized before that, because they spend $.85 of every dollar in the marketplace, they have the power to tell manufacturers what to make (rather than constantly hear from companies about what they should buy).

If not just the book sales, but the e-mails, too, are any indication, women are glad to throw off the old cliché about “loving to shop” as they embrace their potential to become the true arbiters of the new green marketplace. What’s not to love about that?

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