LED Lighting - an Overview

What's All This Buzz about LED Lighting?
LED Lighting - an Overview

Have you heard a little buzz about LED lights? Maybe you’re wondering how they can be incorporated into your worship services. Or maybe you don’t know a thing about them! Here is a brief explanation of LED lighting and some of the best reasons why your church should use LED fixtures.

Long Term Benefits
Imagine never needing to replace a light bulb or burned out gel again. LED fixtures make that idea a reality. High-powered LEDs have a useable running life of 2.5 years (with the lamp on 24 hours a day), which means the average church that runs their lights 10 hours a week would get approximately 38 years of use out of their LED lighting system. Just think of how many light bulbs you won’t have to buy!

With colored LEDs there are no gels to burn, so you won’t be changing those out, either. As a result, you will have stronger, more consistent color saturation. Now that you aren’t changing the lights and gels all the time, it won’t be necessary to break out the ladder as often (or rent a lift and set up scaffolding).

Another long-term benefit is that LED fixtures cost pennies to operate. The light itself is very efficient, plus it doesn’t put out as much heat as traditional fixtures (which cause the A/C system to work harder in order to keep things cool). Less heat also means happier people on the platform.

Millions of Colors to Choose From
Your color choices with LED lights are nearly unlimited. One manufacturer has created a 2’ x 2’ fixture containing 144 “nodes,” where each “node” has a red, green, and blue LED the size of a pencil eraser. The brightness of each LED can be individually addressed so that it is possible to create vibrant, moving displays of color. Up to 64 billion color combinations can be created from this single fixture without ever needing to change a gel.

Create Instantaneous Mood Changes
Perhaps you are using a soft white light on the drummer during worship but for the evening service you want to put a red, blue and green light on the drum kit so that the chrome sticks out a bit more. Normally you would have to break out the ladder and change some gels in between services. With LED fixtures all you have to do is move a fader or push a button and, voil?, instant mood changes. You can easily create fantastic theatrical scenes such as day to night by using only one LED fixture versus multiple traditional fixtures and several gels.

Strong, Rich Color Washes
Using several traditional fixtures with gels of the same color can result in varying shades of that color across your stage. With LED lights, you will get the same rich color every time. LED fixtures offer strong color washes. At the push of a button or the move of a slider you can illuminate an object in any color you wish. You can wash walls and change the mood of the entire room many times throughout the day.

The ‘Not So Bright’ Side
LED lights are not the definitive solution to all of your lighting problems. There are a few things that they do very well, but there are several areas where LED fixtures are limited. They are not well suited for producing white light simply because they are not as bright as traditional fixtures. They also do not do pastel colors very well. Lastly, many LED fixtures have a higher price tag then their traditional counterparts. Since there is no standardization for this technology, parts and components need to be considered proprietary and not interchangeable between systems from different manufacturers.

In a Nut Shell
LED fixtures are a very real solution for your church. They open doors that have been closed to you in the past through the use of traditional fixtures. The up front costs may be more then standard lights but the long-term benefits are tremendous. To fully understand how LED lights can be used in your church call our Lighting Expert, Dieter Gilkey, here at CCI Solutions. You can reach him today at 1-800-426-8664.