Thursday, January 9, 2014

LED ceiling light fix

Many light fixtures are designed to be hanging from the ceiling, where half of the light goes above the light fixture.  This creates a glowing area around the top of the light.  As shown in the following picture (note 1 florescent bulb was out).


I thought this was wasted light, but since LED lights run much cooler, I was hoping to direct most of the light downward instead of upward.  After opening an LED light from its plastic shell, I used a strip of Aluminum held on by a paper clip to build a reflector around the light band of the LED lights.  This is shown in the following picture.


Here is what one of the bulbs looked like before installation.

Note: Attach the shield after the lights are Installed to guarantee positioning. During installation, make sure the paperclip doesn't interfere with the light's electronics (don't allow the ends to penetrate deep into the heat sinks). The result was a very intense light directly under the fixture, much more than expected.  I don't have a light meter to measure the difference but it's noticeable.


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