subject: Warm Tone 2700k Led Festoon Lamps Are Replacing Xenon Lamps For Under Cabinet Lighting [print this page] It is now possible to rival the output of xenon undercabinet strip lighting with 2700K under cabinet led light. Until recently however, there was a noticeable difference between the quality of light emitted by incandescents and xenon cabinet lights and under cabinet led lights. Under cabinet led lights had a difficult time producing white light that could truly function as a replacement for incandescent sources.
With incandescent lights being phased out by 2010 in States such as California, this new development comes just in time for the custom home builder and interior designer to add not only an environmentally friendly, energy saving light source to the kitchen, but also to add a new aesthetic that is fully dimmable and that will compliment any general lighting scheme and kitchen interior decorating theme.
Anyone looking at a countertop could normally tell at first glance that LED cabinet lights were being used to light the kitchen. This is why most custom home builders and interior designers tended to stay with the traditional xenon and incandescent undercabinet lights that had already been established in the marketplace for many years.
LED was seen as a promising new technology, but one that had yet to evolve to a level truly adequate for under cabinet light sourcing. This limitation was due to two factors. First, the amount of light produced by earlier generations of under cabinet led light fixtures was visibly lower than that of naturally bright incandescent and xenon bulbs. LED strip lights, for lack of a better term, simply looked dimmer than other forms of light.
Some people liked this effect, saying that it added ambience and charm to their kitchen as an energy saving, low level light source. Others were more critical; saying that under cabinet led lights looked too much like Christmas lights.
The future of under cabinet led lights looked promising from an energy savings perspective, but the prospect of using them as viable replacements to incandescent lighting still remained problematic at best.
This changed, however, when developers found a way to produce color temperatures as warm as 2700K in an LED cabinet light bulb. The lower the color temperature, the warmer its color temperature is said to be. The higher the color temperature, the cooler the effect of the light becomes.
Thus, a color temperature of 5000K means a very cool white light, which may be more suitable for illuminating commercial display cabinets containing diamond jewelry, for example.
This new generation of 2700K LED bulbs made it possible for specialty lighting manufacturers to take an already innovative under cabinet led lighting design one step further. In previous generations of cabinet lights, engineers learned how to create higher lumen output with lower wattages by using three bulbs in close proximity to one another.
The next step was to take this same design and fit it with new 2700K LED bulbs. This new festoon lighting design is now not only as bright, but also as warm as xenon festoon luminance. For the first time in this history of under cabinet lighting, LED is now poised to eventually replace all other sources of kitchen accent and secondary task lighting.
