Designing With LED
12 August 2008
“Catch a Falling Star”
Lots and lots of information has been disseminated on LEDs over the years, and it is not my intention to simply paraphrase the material anyone with a computer can easily find on the Internet. But what I would like to do is to briefly capsulize the information for those who may be, as I largely am, unaware of the attributes and advantages of this type of lighting.
LEDs (or light-emitting diodes, to use their full name) are one of the most innovative products they’ve ever come up with. Something like 90% of the energy is converted into light, but there’s no filament to burn out, and they are safe to the touch because they do not get hot, as opposed to an incandescent bulb which converts 90% of its energy into heat. Because they’re plastic bulbs, not glass, they’re durable, and because they are so energy efficient, they can run on very low voltage, even batteries. And, as a special added attraction, they can change their light color—and they come in a wide range of colors. Finally, I am told that they are fairly easily to incorporate into designs, either by the manufacturers of various products (which is what we will be exploring) or by homeowners and contractors who can often do something striking by simply plugging in a LED powering connection. And, although not even the pyramids in Egypt are forever, these bulbs do burn for 100,000 hours (tad more than the 750 hours for a typical incandescent bulb!).
So, with that as background, let’s start with something I really wasn’t going to do, but then I thought, oh, man, if there are really people out there who would be willing to pay that kind of money for a table, I could make them such a deal! OK, maybe I couldn’t, but Craig Thibodeau, who we featured on these pages some months ago, certainly could! No charge for the plug, Craig!
But to return to the table we’ve featured at the top of this blog, it is the LED table by Ingo Maurer. We’ve also shown another version, this one in front of LED wallpaper by the same designer. The table at the top is a bit pricey, but it has 278 white LEDs per leaf and is available in 2-leaf ($14,850) and 3-leaf ($22,421) versions at Unica. If I want to dine under the stars, I have to go outside to do so, but the owners of something like this have the stars in any kind of weather, even that rainy night I was saving that fallen star for!
What this does, for those with the money—and the courage, I suspect—to do something different is give them the best of all possible designs: something no one else has. And for the rest of us, it’s chopped liver, right? Wrong. Join me for tomorrow’s blog, and I’ll tell you why.
Joseph
NEXT: “Let Some Light Into This Room”
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