How to Choose the LED Tube

Here are a few things to consider when looking at where to buy your LED T8 tubes

1. Colour of light provided

LED tubes can be manuifactured with a wide choice of colour temperatures. this is the colour of light that the LED T8 tube will provide. A colour temperature of 2700K is known as warm white which is a yellowish type of light, bery similar to the light you would get from traditional fluorescent tubes. Although the light is very warm, an LED tube with a warm white output will not be as bright as ‘cooler’ colour temperatures and can feel a little too cosy so not particularly suitable for commercial environments such as offices. Cool white tubes are at the blue end of the spectrum with a light colour that is often reffered to as Ice white. On the Kelvin temperature scale Cool White tends to be at 5000K – 6000K. The light given off by cool white LED tubes appears very clinical and stark so once again not suitable for a wide range of environments. For this reason all LED T8 tubes manufactured by LED-SUPPLIES.COM are rated at 4000K, or daylight white. At this point on the kelvin scale, the light given off is a very comfortable light, suited to a very wide range of environments including high end domestic and commercial buildings.

CRI or colour rendering index is also an important consideration. CRI is how well an LED tube or other luminaire can accurately reveal the true colours of the objects it is lighting in comparison to a natural light source such as the Sun. Our standard LED T8 tubes have a high CRI of 80, meeting building regulations, although we can produce even higher if needed. For more information on CRI click here

2. Efficiency v Brightness (Lumen output)

Many suppliers of LED T8 tubes will tell you that either efficiency or brightness is the most important thing to look for when choosing your lighting. The truth is that its both of these things combined. Efficiency is very important, after all one of the key reasons to choose an LED T8 tube is to save energy and therefore money. However saving money should not be at the expense of light output. Acheiving a suitable and desired level of light in your room is essential, quite often for safety reasons depending on the environment. Brighter isnt always better though. As a rule as you get brighter you use more energy. You can acheive a perfect balance of efficiency versus brightness by opting to use high quality LEDs which give you a maximum amount of light for the lowest amount of energy. This combined with choosing a perfectly rated LED T8 tube in terms of watts will mean you have the best choice of LED tube. LED-SUPPLIES.COM have designed their tubes with this in mind. As an example, our 1500mm 5 ft LED T8 tube is rated at 24W and provides a light output of 2760 lumens. Information on the light output of all our tubes can be found on the main product page where a full PDF data sheet on the series is also available

3. Warranty – how long will my LED T8 Tube last

If you choose a decent quality LED, by its very nature its built to last. The problem with some LED T8 tubes is that a tube is not just made of LEDs. It has many other components built in. One of the most imortant being the power supply. The internal power supply in an LED T8 tube cannot be replaced easily should it fail, rendering the whole LED tube useless. LED-SUPPLIES.COM not only know LEDs very well, but we know power supplies very well too. We are a trading division of PowerPax, one of the UKs largest power conversion companies. We also offer a 5 year warranty on our tubes as standard for added peace of mind.

4. Safety approved LED T8 Tubes

Our LED tubes are independantly safety lab approved to VDE, TUV and UL standards. Copies of decalartion of compliance is available on request. It is recommended that  you dont purchase your LED tubes from another supplier until you have verified that the tubes you are buying are approved, and by a reputable lab. Safety testing for LED T8 tube manufactures is an expensive but essential part of the supply process and just checking that an LED tube is CE marked is usually not enough to ensure the quality of the product you are buying

5. LED T8 Tubes – The Best design with Safety at its core

LED Tubes should be safe to use above all else, but they are made to serve a purpose. With this in mind our engineers have implemented a number of safety features in addition to some clever design features to make sure this is the case. Our internal power supply has a safety isolated LED driver. Single end anti electric shock powering is standard. We also use an Aluminium PCB for better heat dissipation to aid life. A high quality LED chip is used on all our LED tubes to reduce light degradation rates. We also have a 180 Deg rotating end cap for ease of installation.

If you have any other questions regarding LED T8 tubes, or would like to discuss the pricing or specification of our products we would be very happy to hear from you. Please use the instant chat feature in normal working hours or the contact us page and we will be in contact shortly