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Home improvements aren’t just great for adding value to your property; they also make you feel better too. There’s nothing like a lick of paint to enliven a room, but to really brighten the place up, you should definitely consider replacing your existing sources of illumination with some energy-efficient LED lights.

Many people are putting suspended ceilings in their homes. Also known as “dropped” ceilings, they’re an additional ceiling fitted below the actual one. Quite cheap and relatively simple to install, they’re great for covering unsightly duct work, pipes and wires and, most importantly will allow for the easy installation of a wide variety of LED lights.

Fitted LED Downlights

A perfect type of light for the dropped ceiling, the Fitted LED Downlight will look great and, what’s more, it will require the very minimum amount of maintenance for many years to come. This is due to its design which incorporates both fitment and bulb in one convenient unit.

They’re extremely simple to install, requiring just a hole to be cut, following which, they simply slot in, being secured by the two handy metal butterfly clips.

It doesn’t matter which room you’re thinking of renovating, because there’ll be a type that’s eminently suitable. An example of this is the CREE 9W Dimmable Fire-Rated Downlight.

As you can see from the picture above, this downlight has a smart and stylish front bezel, which will look the bee’s knees when installed in your ceiling. The downlight pictured has a polished chrome fascia, but they’re also available in a variety of different finishes, so at least one will perfectly complement your new suspended ceiling.

It’s a fire-rated product, meaning it’ll afford the occupants of the building an extra 90 minutes of protection in the event of a fire. Not only that, it has a high Ingress Protection Rating, so it’s impervious both to dust and low-pressure jets of water from all directions. This makes it the ideal choice of downlight fitting for bathroom applications, but it can also be used outdoors as well.

Extended Life-Span

Some people may find themselves put off by the fact that they’re all-in-one units; thinking mainly of when the times coming to replace the bulb. Whilst this would be a legitimate concern were the bulbs traditional halogen models with their 1,200 hour life-spans, however, all LED lights boast a 50,000 hour life-expectancy, meaning you won’t even need to think about replacing one for over 17 years!

If you’re a traditionalist, however, you may still be of the opinion that bulb and fitting should forever remain separate entities. Well that’s no problem at all, because there are an enormous number of non-fitted lights that are compatible with bestselling variety of GU10 LED Bulbs. They’re the GU10 LED Downlights and Fittings, and they can also be had in Fire-Rated, IP65 Fire-Rated, Standard and IP65 Standard, as well as Short Can models which will make your life a whole lot easier if you don’t have a great deal of recess space in your dropped ceiling to play about with.

With these downlights, the choice of bulbs is all-important, and which you choose will be largely dependent upon the level of brightness you require for your room or space.

GU10 LED Bulbs

Fortunately, the GU10 LED bulbs with which they’re compatible come in a wide variety of lumens.  From the little 3.3 watt, GU10 80 SMD which produces 400 lumens of light intensity, to the Dimmable GU10 9 watt COB at 860, you’ll find a GU10 LED light bulb that’s ideal for your needs.

Another important factor when you’re installing downlights, is achieving just the right number for your room or space. This goes hand-in-hand with creating the correct ambience for the room’s function. It’s always best to make a plan, but the different colour temperatures in which the GU10 LEDs are available will definitely help you make your decision.

If you’re at all unsure about which colour temperature is best suited to which room, check out this short video we’ve produced to explain:

Spotlights

If dropped or suspended ceilings aren’t your thing, but you still want to brighten up your room, you might consider installing one or more LED Ceiling Spotlight Fittings. As their name suggests, they can be affixed to your ceiling, however, they’ll be equally at home on any of your walls.

Spotlights are brilliant for highlighting a room’s particular features, and can be used to great effect to pick out an area thanks to their adjustable heads. Thus, you’ll be able to maximise the LED bulbs’ beam angles which range from a fairly concentrated ‘spot’ at 38° to a much more widely-dispersed beam of 120°.

As with the downlights, you’ll need to decide on the optimum number for your room, but as a general rule-of-thumb, the smaller the room, the fewer spotlights you’ll need and vice versa.

Luckily, there are tons to choose from, with Singles, Triples, Quads, Six-Ways and 8-Ways, which themselves can be  positioned through 360°.

If it’s the kids’ bedrooms you’re thinking of livening up, why not treat them with a fun and exciting RGB (Red, Green, Blue) E27 LED Bulb? They’ll fit right into your existing E27 spotlight fitting and, with their built-in Infra-Red sensor, you’ll be able to create a dazzlingly colourful lighting display, thanks to the  Magic Lighting Remote Control that’s supplied completely free of charge.

The two RGB LED bulbs on offer are the 3 Watt E27 RGB LED which will easily replace a 30 Watt halogen, and the 5 Watt Globe which is the perfect 50 Watt halogen replacement.

Energy-Efficiency

Like all LED light bulbs, these won’t just last a lot longer than the bulbs they’re designed to replace; they’ll also cost you considerably less to run. If the numbers aren’t already enough of a giveaway, LEDs use just 1/10^th the amount of electricity of traditional bulbs, but generate exactly the same amount of light.

As a result of this, if you do decide to replace your home’s current sources of illumination, with energy-efficient LEDs, you’ll certainly notice the difference the next time your electricity bill drops on the doormat!