LED 101

When LED lighting companies list their longevity, they indicate a term called ‘L70’. This is a term that is dedicated to LED due to its special characteristic where it does not burn out, but instead fade slowly. Other lighting technologies as you may have witnessed, ‘burn out’ and cease to function at all. What this means to you if you choose to use your kudos LED light bulb beyond its L70 figure, is you could use it longer than what is indicated.

The L70 is a term to describe the performance of an LED light from its original luminance performance. An L70 figure would simply indicate the hours it takes for the light to drop to 70% of its out-of-the-box performance. There are other figures used such as L80 and L90, however L70 has become the standard used to define longevity. From tests conducted on human vision, it was found that test subjects were not able to clearly detect light degradation at values less than 30%. Thus, figures above L70 were deemed less than useful.

Let us take a look at the lifespan values of the different light technologies out in the market: