Lend Me A Hand

Modern floor lamps can add a touch of class, elegance and sophistication to any room. At the same time, depending on the specific design you choose, they can also communicate a sense of creativity and fun and playfulness. Choosing the right floor lamp is not a life-changing decision; but it can say a lot about a person in the way they choose certain aspects of their home or office décor.

Do you already know what you’re looking for in modern contemporary floor lamps, or are you still open to the enormously wide array of choices that will be available to you? Because if you have not yet settled on anyone specific type of lamp, it is worth considering one aspect of “modern floor lamps”, with the emphasis on ‘modern’. And that aspect is being on the cutting edge of technology while also being on the cutting edge of environmental awareness.

In case you’re not aware, the future of lighting is in LED lights. They have been on the rise for a while now, but only recently have they begun to take hold in more day-to-day objects such as floor lamps. In case you don’t know what an LED light is, it stands for “Light Emitting Diode”, And it is very much like the small lights you may have strong on your Christmas tree. The difference is that rather than a soft, gentle light like you’re used to seen on a Christmas tree, LED lights can be extremely bright. At the same time they are extremely efficient, needing only a small fraction of the electricity of a standard light bulb.

Another event at the LED lights is that, since they use very little energy, they produce very little heat. Many different modern floor lamps today utilize halogen light bulbs. While halogen floor lamps give off a great light, they burn extremely hot. So not only is this an energy consumption concern, but if you happen to have children around, you need to make absolutely certain that they do not have the opportunity to touch one of these bulbs for fear that they could get severely burned.

In fact, another aspect of halogen light bulbs to which you may not be aware regarding how hot they burn, is the fact that you need to be very careful when installing these bulbs into your floor lamp. They advise you to not touch the bulbs with your skin, but rather to use a tissue while holding it and putting it into place. If you think this is odd, the reason is because of the previously mentioned hot, hot temperatures at which they run. Even a little bit of oil residue from your fingers left behind on the bulb can be enough to cause problems such as overheating and burning out the bulb. Like I said… very delicate.

The fact that a halogen bulb can potentially burn out very quickly if you accidentally touch it or if they poor, hapless moth happens to land on it and get incinerated, brings me to another benefit of LED lighting which is its longevity. The life expectancy of an LED light is a lot longer than your traditional light bulb. I mean a LOT longer. Perhaps I need to emphasize again… a lot, LOT longer. How much longer? Let’s take a quick comparative look.

Your typical lifespan of a 60 Watt incandescent light bulb is about 1500 hrs. (maybe 2000 hours if you’re lucky). On the other hand, LED lights have expected lifespans of 60 THOUSAND hours. How long is 60,000 hours exactly?

Think about it this way; there are 24 hours a day and 365 days in a year. Multiply those two together and you get 8760 hours in a year. That means that an LED light left burning constantly, 24 hours a day seven days a week, would be on for nearly 7 years before it needed to be replaced. And all that time it is burning only 1/10 of the energy of the typical incandescent bulb.

The problem with LEDs is consumer buying. Comparing the lights we just discussed above, you can understand why people might be hesitant to jump onto the LED bandwagon right away. The cost of a typical incandescent light bulb is about $1.35 As opposed to $54.95 for light emitting diode light bulbs. Not a very easy pill to swallow at first, is it? But let’s look at how that pans out over time.

If you consider how quickly the incandescent bulb will burn out (let’s give it 1500 hrs. of life), You will need to purchase 40 of them to last as long as your single LED light. Buying 40 light bulbs at $1.35 each brings you to $54 in light bulb expense compared to the $54.95 spent for the single LED. And what is the cost difference on the energy used? The old-style lightbulb will cost you about $820 over that time while the LED will be 1/10 of that, or about $82. So if you add up the combined costs of the lightbulb plus the energy to light it for those 60,000 hours, on the one hand (the old hand), you have spent about $875. On the other hand (the new hand), you have spent about $137. How do you like them apples?

Hopefully you can see the benefits of LED lighting and how it really is a modern choice. Not only for your pocketbook but for the environment as well. And don’t worry, it’s not like you need to have some kind of Hippie floor lamp to accommodate these sensible choices. You can find some beautifully elegant modern floor lamps that utilize LEDs.

One example that you might want to look into is the I-Tower High Power LED Floor Lamp.   At right around $200 on Amazon.com, it may not fall into the category of cheap modern floor lamps, but it’s really quite reasonably priced especially when you consider the long term costs of going with a traditional floor lamp.  The I-Tower comes with six high power “Next-Gen” LED lights that accommodate a four step dimmer switch as well as a full one year manufacturer’s warranty. Its lines are crisp, clean and very attractive and you can position it in any of a large number of ways to suit your needs. Plus, it only uses 8.8 W of electricity. Now if that doesn’t say “modern floor lamps” to you, I don’t know what does.