How to choose the right LED Lighting Supplier

When choosing an LED Lighting Supplier you want to choose someone you can trust with excellent product and application knowledge (not to mention good price and delivery).  However, with many items being available on the internet how do you really know what you’re buying?  It can be almost impossible to contact someone to speak to and, when you do, they have little understanding of the product and simply know the basics.  Oh… “it’s 40 watts”! Or “it’s 6000K”!

Today, almost anyone can supply LED lighting and there is a huge choice of different LED lighting products to buy, so how can you decide what to buy and from whom?

Let’s look at LED 600 x 600 panels as an example.  They are available to purchase from your local wholesaler, eBay, Amazon and many other online suppliers and, with prices ranging between £20 and £100, are you confident you know what you’re buying?  If you have doubts you will be relying on your supplier for guidance and to provide the correct solution.

There are a variety of options, even with the simple panel: on the other hand… it’s not quite so simple! There are many parameters to consider –

Lumen output ranges from 2500 to 4500 lm, Power from 27-52 watts, Colour temperature from 3000-6000K, cool white, daylight, warm white, Dimming/Sensors/Emergency packs/daylight harvesting. Glare rating.  And guarantees from 3 years to 7 years.

No, not at all simple!

Ask the LED Lighting supplier what is suitable for your application – e.g. for Office LED lighting, LED Sports Hall Lighting or Car Park Lighting. Make sure to ask them if they know what the CIBSE recommended colour rendering is or the recommended light level, or the uniformity.  9 times out of 10 the person you are speaking to (or the rep, if they’re visiting you) will not have the knowledge needed to answer your questions and you’ll get the generic answer “it’s 40 watts and will replace a 4×18 fitting” but they may well have no idea what it means.

If they can’t answer your questions, then there is a chance that the products recommended might not perform as you require.

In the old days, replacing a tube was easy – most of them had the same output and the luminaire took care where the light went and your original designer will have taken care of everything else.

It’s probably not enough to simply look on their website or read their blogs and news pages. It’s all too easy nowadays to have a professional looking website telling you just how great they are.  Nobody is going to tell you how bad they are, are they?!  As mentioned previously, you need to talk to them to get a feel for their expertise and knowledge on LED Lighting.

It’s also important to ensure the supplier you are using has all the right accreditations to ensure you are in good hands and buying from a reputable company.

Earlsmann are an LED Lighting Supplier and have been providing LED Lighting solutions for over 10 years and understand exactly what’s needed for many different applications. If you’re not sure about any of the jargon and claims or you think you’re not getting the whole story, then please do give us a call. We back up our proposed solutions with light models and many installations.

We would love to help or point you in the right direction.

Tel: 0845 6434 740

Email: sales@earlsmann.co.uk

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