LED Flood Lights
LED flood lights are great for illuminating walls, signs, and tree canopies. They offer high-quality illumination and excellent color rendering while consuming less energy than traditional lights.
When choosing the right LED flood light for your needs, there are a few things to keep in mind. These include wattage, lumens, color temperature, and mounting options.
Lighting Needs
Flood lights are aimable luminaires that project a wide beam of light for area illumination. They are a good option for most outdoor lighting applications that require a high level of illumination and for which photometric performance can be refined through a trial-and-adjustment process.
Secondary optics such as lenses and reflectors shape the radiation pattern of LEDs in a floodlighting luminaire. Their use helps to achieve uniformity ratios that are close to the ANSI CRI.
LED flood lights are used by business to keep their parking lots and walkways well-lit. This way, employees and customers don’t have to worry about safety when they leave the building or walk back to their cars after dark. They are also used by schools to keep students safe on their way home after nighttime classes or study sessions.
Lumens and Wattage
LED flood lights operate in a variety of wattages and lumens, with the higher the wattage the brighter the light. The lumen number correlates with wattage; as watts go up so does the lumen count.
Commonly used wattage ranges from 100 watts to 400 watts. This is similar to traditional HID wattages but with much lower operating costs.
Some LED flood lights are designed as photocell compatible dusk to dawn lights, automatically turning on once the sun goes down and off once it rises. These are a great choice for retail establishments who can reap the benefits of an illuminated storefront while saving money on energy costs. The modular LED engine is co-located in a die cast aluminum housing to provide both conductive and convection cooling for the system.
Color Temperature
LED flood lights are aimable luminaires that project a beam of light to illuminate specific areas, surfaces or objects. They come in a wide range of lumens and wattage options to accommodate different lighting needs.
High lumens are typically used for outdoor spaces that need to be illuminated in broad areas such as airports and parking lots. They also led flood lights offer an enhanced S/P ratio which helps to reduce glare and shadowing.
Lower lumen levels, such as 3000K, appear yellow-white and are best suited for indoor uses as they create a cozy atmosphere. A 5000K color temperature appears blue-white and is apt for comprehensive commercial spaces as it is easy on the eyes and provides clear visibility.
Beam Angle
A floodlight’s beam angle determines how much light it casts in all directions. It can range from wider to narrower. Wider beam angles are typically best for areas like lounging spaces where people want pools of light rather than glaring bright spots in their eyes.
The wide range of available beam patterns makes LED flood lights qualified for most outdoor directional lighting applications except roadway and street lighting that require unique beam pattern designs. This versatility helps to maximize fixture spacing for dramatic reductions in equipment and installation costs.
A narrow spot distribution provides a tight, symmetrical concentrated beam that’s great for accenting landscape and facade features with farther setbacks. It also works well for flagpole lighting and grazing sculptures.
Weather Resistance
A durable flood light with a weather resistant design can be a great addition to your home or business. It can help deter burglars from targeting your property, and it can also help improve the overall look of your space. This light is ETL certified, meaning it has been tested by an electrical testing lab to ensure it meets safety standards.
LEDs emit in a directional Lambertian spatial intensity distribution that can be controlled with secondary optics to achieve uniform illumination across a surface or area. This provides a dramatic improvement in quality of illumination over HID systems that rely on hot spots of excessive luminance.
The spectral composition of LEDs can be tuned to provide CRI values well above 70 for superior color rendition and meet the most demanding requirements. The long lifespan and minimal maintenance requirements of LEDs further drive down the total cost of ownership for lighting applications.
Dimming and Control Options
Some LED flood lights are dimmable, but this feature will depend on the specific model and wattage. Check the product specs for details.
LEDs emit in a directional Lambertian spatial intensity distribution that allows for high efficiency optical control. Unlike HID fixtures that have the majority of their illuminance land directly below the fixture, LEDs provide uniform illumination across the entire field of view.
LEDs also have an impressive spectral performance, with the best providing superior color rendition and CRI over 90. These excellent spectral qualities allow the light source to perform well within the mesopic vision range where driver visibility is critical in traffic applications. Many LED flood lights offer pulse-width modulation (PWM) dimming. This works by alternating between the full current requirement and zero power to turn on or off the LEDs at a rate that is imperceptible to the human eye.
Installation and Maintenance
Flood lights are aimable led flood lights LED luminaires that project a beam of light. They come in many different forms to suit a variety of applications.
Consider the location of your property before making a decision on which flood light to buy. Some models have a large detection range, meaning they can illuminate your neighbor’s yard as well.
Installing a new fixture is fairly easy. First, turn off the power for safety. Then remove the old fixture by unscrewing it from the wall plate and pulling it away from the wall. If there are wires connected, use a voltage tester to ensure the power is off before you touch them.
Next, connect the new flood light by matching the wiring colors – white to white, black to black and bare wire to bare wire.
