Is LED the future of lighting?

Many may still not familiar with LED or light-emitting diode lights, but it seems that the lighting industry is moving towards this technology.

Yours truly was lucky enough to get the opportunity to visit one of the biggest lighting event in the world, the Lightfair International in New York last month.

Almost all of the 500 exhibitors at the event have at least one product or some all products based on LED technology.

Tech&U, New Straits Times, was there on the invitation by Philips, one of the main exhibitors at Lightfair.

What's the big deal about LED

Put aside the price. Its benefits are a lot actually, in the long run - low maintenance, energy saving, multi-colour and programmable.

Unlike normal bulbs or lights, can can only last a few thousand hours, LEDs can give lights up to 60,000 hours.

It's like once you install and LED light, you can forget about changing it. Besides long lasting, it saves energy up to 80 percent than current technology.

Talk about green house effect, LED could be part of the answers in lowering carbon emissions.

Besides that, the LED bulbs can produce any desiredcolour (up to 16 million colours), which is not possible with any other existing technology.

These include creating effects such as colour wall washing and sharp light/ shadowlines.

It's programmable

LED also allows consumers to minimise light pollution since it can beprecisely targeted - because it is programmable with a computing software.

One of the most common sights of LED lighting use today is in billboardadvertisements in famous intersections such as Times Square in New York,Piccadilly Circus in London, and Ginza in Tokyo.

The effects are amazingwhere these advertisements come alive with millions of colours, and withvideo capability they can easily capture the attention of passers-by.

Even though not available in this region yet, LED lighting is alreadybeing used today in homes as decorative lighting, very often usingcolours. A key feature of LED-based lighting is the ability to change the colourof the light. This opens up the possibility of personalising light effectsto change the ambience in a room or the colour of an object.