Hot Lighting, Cool Lighting – What’s The Difference?

It all depends of course on what you mean by hot and cool. If something is described as hot it might be because it’s the latest must have trend or simply because it has a particularly high temperature. Likewise cool can indicate stylish, sophisticated, clever and so on, or it might just mean cool to the touch.

When it comes to lighting, and specifically kitchen lighting, then we’re really cooking (so to speak) because this is an environment where you can choose between hot lighting that looks seriously cool and cool lighting that looks red hot. And the difference between the two? Well that would be cost. Let’s explain…

While there is no question that recessed halogen lamps and artfully angled spotlights lend any kitchen a really contemporary look, they also cost a fortune to run for the simple reason that they waste so much of their input electricity as heat (and need frequent replacement). And additional heat is also pretty much the last thing you want in a kitchen anyway.

So that’s physically hot lighting that looks cool – stylish but high maintenance – but what about the other way round? Well if, instead of using conventional halogen lamps for spotlighting, you install LED spot lights you can still make your kitchen look like the hottest place in town but without the added heat problem in tow.

Modern 5 to 6 watt LED spot lights are easily as powerful as regular 50 watt halogen lamps, but as you can deduce from the figures they consume barely ten percent of the electricity to produce the same amount of light. And the reason is very simple: whereas an ordinary incandescent light bulb converts only about ten percent of its input energy into light and the rest is lost as heat, an LED works the other way round and converts almost all its energy into light with very little ending up as heat.

So in summary, kitchen lights based on LED technology cost a fraction as much to run because they waste very little heat and thus run cool to the touch, yet still look hot (or cool if you prefer). Hopefully that’s cleared that up.