LED vs. Incandescent Light Bulbs: What’s the difference?
As we head into the holiday season, we will start to see houses draped with tinsel, blow-up reindeer, and, most importantly, lights. What lights are people putting up on their houses, and what lights make the most sense to put up on your house? The most common types of holiday lights are LED and incandescent, so today, I will answer these questions and explain the differences between LED and incandescent lights.
If you have an old box of holiday lights that have been used in your family for what feels like your whole life, you probably have incandescent lights. Incandescent lights were discovered in the early 1900s and are the simplest light to create. An incandescent light produces light by running a current through a wire. Over time the wire will heat up and produce light. Incandescent lights do not actually produce any of the unique colors you often see them in: red, green, and blue. Instead the glass that surrounds the light determines the color (it is the same idea as putting a yellow piece of paper under a light and getting yellow light). There are a few benefits to having an incandescent light. The main one is that they are cheap to produce, easy on the eyes, and work well in cold temperatures.
However, there is one considerable downside to incandescent light bulbs: energy efficiency. As I mentioned earlier, incandescent bulbs produce light through heating up a wire until it glows. I didn’t mention that most of the energy used for the light is simply lost to producing heat. This means that if you have an incandescent bulb, 90 percent of the energy used to light that bulb is lost to heat, where only 10 percent of the energy is actually used to light the bulb! So although they are cost effective upfront, the energy required to light them might make them incredibly inefficient. Additionally, the wires that are heated up tend to burn out after a while, so you might have to go through and replace burnt out lights every year if you want the entire stream of lights to be used.
If you've bought holiday lights in the past few years, there is a good chance you have bought LEDs, which is the abbreviation for a light-emitting diode. LEDs work quite differently than incandescent bulbs. LEDs create light through a diode. In the diode, electrons are pushed along by the electric current to positively charged carriers known as holes. The electrons have more energy than the holes and when the electrons get pushed along by the current, they combine with the holes and release their excess energy as light. After this, they go around the circuit again and repeat the process. Although the outside of LEDs often mirror the actual colors of the LEDs, this is not what gives them their color. Instead, LEDs get their colors through the type of materials that are used to make the diode. For example, in the case of a red LED, indium gallium phosphide is used to produce the color red. Often the biggest downside to LEDs is the cost. But, the upside is that LEDs are more reliable long term and require less energy to power. So over time, they are more cost-effective than incandescent lights.
If you are putting up lights this year, take some time and figure out what lights you actually have. And if you are in the market for some lights, it might make the most sense to go for LEDs. Although they may seem more expensive, they are cheaper and more effective long term.
