LED Lights Offer Superior Efficiency, Creativity

By Adam Kirby, Associate Editor -- Hotels, 4/1/2008

Just as the move to compact fluorescent bulbs has gone mainstream, leading-edge hoteliers are transitioning to an even more energy-efficient lighting source: light-emitting diodes, commonly known as LED.

LED lights beat compact fluorescents in both energy efficiency and life expectancy. Fluorescent bulbs typically expire after about 10,000 hours, while LED lights can last for up to 60,000. Incandescent bulbs, by contrast, rarely survive past 2,000 hours. Additionally, LEDs require roughly half as much electricity as compact fluorescents. LED lights are more expensive to install than compact fluorescents, but that cost can even out over the life of the lights, considering less frequent replacement and the reduced energy use.

“LED technology in general offers a lot of promise for the future,” says Ray Burger, president of Missouri-based Pineapple Hospitality, which sells eco-friendly products to the hotel industry. “Just about all the applications that compact fluorescents are currently in service for at hotels will eventually be replaced by LEDs.”

Widespread implementation of LED lights is about five years off, Burger guesses, as the price comes down and general illumination is perfected. Still, many hotels already have adopted LEDs for small-scale applications, like exit signs. And vendors such as Philips Electronics are offering other LED products, like Philips’ Stumble Light, a motion-activated LED system that provides soft lighting for guests who get up in the middle of the night.

Some hotels, like the newly opened InterContinental San Francisco, are installing LEDs in restaurants and meeting rooms to serve as both decoration and effective illumination. The technology is a nice alternative to using bulbs with colored gels for stage lighting, as LEDs can be digitally manipulated, and thus are capable of emitting precise shades of any color in the rainbow at the touch of a button. Hue, intensity and saturation are easily adjustable, and even plain white light can be made to look more natural than light produced by bulbs.

“We’re able to hit any spectrum of the color wheel using LED, just by tapping into the computer,” says Mary Kehoe, director of sales for PSAV Presentation Services and coordinator of the hotel’s LED installation. “It allows more lighting options and is a lot more fun.”

The InterContinental is considering adding LED lights in lounges and reception areas as well, Kehoe says. And PSAV engineers are exploring ways to change the appearance of entire walls by manipulating dense collections of LEDs.

“When you have many of them together, you can take any wall and basically turn it into any complete color, faded from one to the next. You can literally paint the wall with LEDs—it’s really cool,” Kehoe says.

A similar effect is currently in place at the Hyatt Regency Miami, where curtains layered with LEDs enable the customizable display of logos or words.