3 tips to boost your home design with energy-efficient LED bulbs

If you dream about transforming your home on a budget, chances are you have considered new paint, area rugs or window treatments. While these updates can refresh rooms without breaking the bank, there is a crucial and often overlooked design element that can truly transform a room — lighting.

The good news is, improving lighting does not necessarily require all new fixtures. Simply swapping from standard to LED light bulbs can upgrade the ambience of your home with stylish features and energy-saving benefits that can have a dramatic impact on your energy bill — and the look and feel of your overall space.

Lighting can alter the appearance of paint, furnishings and decor, becoming even more important as seasons change. As the days get shorter and darker, brighten up your home with an elevated, energy-efficient home basic: LED light bulbs.

Here are a few bright ideas to revamp rooms using the power of the humble light bulb:

1. Go LED for cost savings.

Select LED bulbs reduce household energy costs over the course of their lifetime. An EcoSmart light bulb saves 55 cents to $2.65 on average per bulb over its 25,000-hour lifetime. New LED light bulbs offer the latest innovation in lighting technology and are available in a wide assortment of wattage outputs, colors, base options and shapes.

2. Consider function.

LEDs are directional light sources, enabling them to cast light and use energy more efficiently. When choosing your ideal light-bulb style, consider the room’s purpose. A kitchen needs to be bright to aid food preparation, but your bedroom should be a restful, cozy haven. For a living room, you may want to switch from a game-and-puzzle center with focused lighting to a darkened home theater for movie night.

• Kitchens need light in order to perform cooking tasks, as well as for entertaining. EcoSmart LED recessed and track lighting offer strong overhead illumination in enclosed fixtures.

• Bathrooms need effective lighting, plus decorative style. Globe-shaped LED light bulbs emit light in every direction, making them ideal for mirror and pendant lights.

• Dining areas are a great place to show off decorative fixtures with candle bulbs. New improved decorative bulbs feature a thinner, longer filament design — with options like fine bendy or horizontal — that combine authentic styles and 360-degree light output with low glare for high-quality lighting that does not sacrifice style.

• Bedrooms or living areas where ambience is paramount offer endless creative possibilities. Vintage is a look that never truly goes out of style, and EcoSmart “Edison” bulbs give a more “true vintage look,” along with the benefits of LED technology. EcoSmart offers a dimmable option for these bulbs, too, so you can choose exactly how much light you want.

• Outdoor living spaces benefit from security lighting. Turn any fixture into a state-of-the-art security fixture with features such as motion sensors, high output and duskto-dawn. Look for light bulbs that are compatible with flood lights, security and landscape lighting.

3. Choose “color temperature” to change the mood.

Today’s LED bulbs offer a wide variety of color temperatures, empowering you to make the room feel warmer and cozier, or cooler and crisper.

Contrary to what you may think, the hotter the light source (measured in Kelvins), the cooler the “color temperature,” so lights with temperatures at 5,000 or more Kelvins look brighter, crisper and more bluish. However, light temperatures around 2,500-3,000 Kelvins emit an amber, yellowish or orange tinge, which makes rooms feel warmer and cozier.

“Like choosing paint in cool or warm colors, picking the right color temperature for lighting can really transform a space,” said Sarah Fishburne, director of trend and design for The Home Depot. “You can emphasize warm tones like yellows, reds and oranges using ‘warm’ colored lighting, or you can make a room feel lighter, brighter and airier by choosing ‘cool’ temperature lighting.”

Experiment with different bulbs and settings to see what works best with your room. For the ultimate color selection, try an EcoSmart lightbulb with 5 CCT (correlated color temperature) that lets you customize the color of light using an integrated switch. Bulbs equipped with DuoBright technology empower you to adjust the color temperature and brightness with your existing dimmer switch to meet your preferences at any time — emitting 5,000 Kelvins (daylight) at full brightness and slowly transitioning to 2,000 Kelvins (sunset glow) when dimmed.

Change your lightbulbs; change the world What is the other good news about swapping out light bulbs? You are helping the environment, too. On average, an enhanced EcoSmart LED bulb uses 85 percent less energy than a traditional incandescent light bulb.