7 Tips for Choosing a Street Spotlight
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The first thing you must decide before choosing a spotlight for your home is what it will be used for. This decision will affect all of the following parameters: power, type of lamps, design features, etc. In everyday life, the need for spotlights arises for three reasons: construction is underway, it is necessary to give the landscape design a more original look, or you just need to make security lighting on the street.
As for the construction site, for it you need to choose a lamp with a bright directional light flux. The glow should be monochrome (no play of colors is appropriate here). For decorative street lighting, RGB spotlights are suitable, which with the help of additional devices can smoothly change their glow and make a beautiful night view of a suburban area. For protection, you need to select devices with a motion sensor, directed, but not too bright.
Lamp type
The second, no less important stage of the choice is to determine the type light source. Today, spotlights can be LED, halogen, metal halide and sodium. Each option has its own advantages, which we will now consider.
LED
The first and most modern option is LED devices. LEDs are the future, so here you need to dwell in more detail.
Among the advantages of such devices are:
- low power consumption;
- long service life (over 50 thousand hours);
- resistance to vibration;
- high IP degree of protection;
- can be used at temperatures from -30 to + 40 ° C (there are models with an even wider range);
- have unlimited on / off resource.
And this is not a complete list of the advantages of LED spotlights. As for the shortcomings, he alone - the high cost of LED products.
Halogen
The second most popular are halogen lamps. Their advantage is low price and high color rendering. As for the shortcomings, the main ones are considered to be a short service life (no more than 4000 hours) and strong heating during prolonged operation (it is impossible to touch the case without gloves).
Many people ask questions about which spotlight is better to choose for lighting the yard - halogen or LED. If you have money, we recommend giving preference to a more modern option, as Such a lamp pays off very quickly and at the same time it will serve for over 10 years.
Metal halide
Next on the list are metal halide floodlights for lighting. A gas discharge lamp having high light output is installed inside such devices. Metal halide lamps have a bright cold glow, which is suitable at a construction site or for an area where you need to take care of good lighting. Another advantage of choosing this option is high reliability and resistance to voltage drops.
Sodium
Well, the last option is sodium floodlights. For lighting in such devices, sodium discharge lamps are used. The disadvantage of such light sources is poor color rendering, so they are more often used to illuminate the perimeter of buildings and those areas where special requirements are not imposed according to the brightness of the glow. The advantage of choosing sodium floodlights is their versatility - you can easily replace the type of light source with another.
We sorted out the types of lamps. I would like to provide a few more facts in favor of LED devices. Firstly, all other alternatives are unstable to vibrations and may fail when it appears. Secondly, LEDs, unlike discharge lamps, do not harm the environment, therefore, they can be disposed of in a regular trash can. Thirdly, diodes are much stronger than their competitors and can withstand minor mechanical damage, which are not uncommon in the street.
Power
Talk about how to choose a spotlight by power is not so simple. It depends on where exactly you will use the lamp, how far the rays should reach, and how much area should be illuminated. All these parameters are purely individual, therefore, in order to choose the most suitable option for certain conditions, you need to accurately determine its purpose.
If you want to choose a spotlight to illuminate a house on the street (porch), just select the LED option with a power of about 30 watts. At the same time, a halogen lamp for the same conditions should have a power of about 300 W, or even more. Even by this comparison, it can be said that LEDs significantly save energy and at the same time have the same performance.
Additional features
Above, we examined the main criteria that will allow you to choose the right spotlight for the street, but this is not all you need to know. Modern luminaires may be equipped with additional functions that may be useful to you, and which you may not even know about.
So, when choosing, pay attention to the following nuances:
- The searchlight can be stationary or mobile. In the latter case, the device has a movable mount and a handle, which is convenient for transferring from place to place. We recommend choosing this option if you started construction at the cottage or decided to make temporary illumination of an object.
- The degree of protection against moisture and dust (marked with the letters IP) must be at least 65 if the application is outdoor. Ideally, you need to choose the maximum possible protection - IP 68, to be sure of the normal functioning of the device. I would also like to add here - if you decide to hang a spotlight to illuminate the site, be sure to install it under the roof visor or under another type of protection. In this case, you additionally protect the case from atmospheric precipitation and wind, which are the main pests.
- A sensible idea would be to choose a lamp that is additionally equipped with a motion sensor and a photo relay. In this case, the light will turn on only for two reasons: it got dark on the street or IR rays detected a person’s movement in the coverage area. These two additions allow significant save energy and make the lighting autonomous.
- LED spotlight for the home can have one powerful LED or matrix. We do not recommend choosing the last type of performance, asthe matrix heats up faster and has less light output.
- The body of the lamp must be aluminum or an alloy with this metal. If you saw a plastic lamp in the store to illuminate the area, bypass it. The reason is that this embodiment will not withstand mechanical damage and high temperatures, as a result of which it will quickly fail.
- There are battery powered devices. We recommend choosing this option if you need temporary illumination of the territory or there are cases of power outages on the site.
- Oddly enough, its functionality may depend on the shape of the lamp. For example, a square shape is suitable for uniform illumination of a large area. Round projectors have a directional light output, while linear ones are suitable for pool lights and building facades.
By the way, you can save money and make a spotlight do it yourself. We recommend one of the assembly examples to be viewed:
That's all I wanted to tell you about how to choose the right spotlight for the street. We hope that the information was useful and interesting for you. Once again we repeat that it is better to organize LED lighting, which will make it possible to quickly pay back the money spent.
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Thanks so much for the video! In principle, everything is clear and understandable, how much the 30 W lamp shines.
An interesting and useful overview of floodlights, I learned a lot of new things, although I myself am engaged in floodlights for scenes!
The video really came in handy as a good example of cheap, low-quality LED spotlights that littered the construction markets and shops.
This 30-watt floodlight can easily replace one 10-watt, but really good quality. A 30-watt was supposed to flood almost the entire yard, and believe me - from a real 30-watt floodlight, the strip on the ground would be clearly visible. And so you practically merge the light from one 36-watt fluorescent lamp !! And if you had two such lamps? would they “clog” the spotlight? I’ll explain a little bit - 5 watts of LEDs = 10 watts of the luminescence, the comparison is not accurate, since LED technology is constantly improving, but so far it’s approximately the same.
That is why people are deceived. Disclose the information in full. Said A, say B.
An LED is an element that shines depending on the current supplied to it.
Let's say the operating voltage is 12V, and the current can be supplied to it differently. Those. for a certain LED there is a range of current strength, the minimum is when it started to shine, the maximum is when it “burns out a little more” 🙂 At maximum current, the light flux (in lumens) will be maximum, as well as the power consumption but, the service life will be minimal. Conversely, with a minimum current strength - the luminous flux and power consumption - are minimal, and the service life is maximum.
Here is "playing" with this very current - we can choose the optimal mode for us. But, since an ordinary user buys a ready-made solution in a store (where the manufacturer has already set this parameter), we are "led" to greater light output (see lumens).
So in your example,
1) either a 10-watt searchlight will not live long (if it is "wound" to the level of a 30-watt);
2) either a 30-watt will live a very long time (if "twisted" to the level of a 10-watt);
3) either in the 30-watt floodlight the manufacturer “cheated” and put in the floodlight, for example, a 20-watt LED, or even a 10-watt one.
But here I was faced with the fact that the spotlight can have super strong flicker and when the camera is on the street, then the nicherta is not visible on the record because of this. But recently I put two glanzen floodlights, everything seems to be ok. Also checked that there was the desired ip, the quality of the case. Well, I don’t know, while the autumn rains were there I didn’t see the changes, which means everything works as it should :).
At one time I bought myself a 60W spotlight. It was excellent. But he "died" a year later. Having disassembled, I saw that the ballast “died” (the power supply, who don’t understand), most likely, because it says 50W and it is designed for a load of 50W, not 60.