3 Reasons To Choose LED Over Neon For Your Channel Letter Sign
An outdoor sign is one of the simplest, yet most important aspects of advertising your business. No matter what your line of work happens to be, catching the attention of pedestrians and cars driving by is important to developing a customer base. Plus, you want customers that found you through the yellow pages or your website to be able to find your location, even in the dark. An illuminated sign, like one made from channel letters, can help greatly to make your business location noticeable. However, when choosing your sign, you'll have to decide whether you want LED or neon to illuminate your channel letters. Here are a few reasons why LED letters should be the choice for you.
LED Lights Cost Less
LED lights are specifically designed for efficiency. The letters "LED" stand for "Light Emitting Diode". These light emitting diodes are semiconductors that turn electrons into light. This method of creating light is more energy efficient than other methods of creating light, because it generates mostly light and little heat.
Why is this important for you to know? If you don't have any experience with illuminated signs, you might not be aware of how much some types of illuminated signs can raise your energy bills. The purpose of adding an illuminated sign to your business is to draw in customers and increase your profits, not eat away at your bottom line by raising your utility bills. Sometimes you need to spend money to make money, but there's no sense in spending more than you have to. An LED sign costs around $14 less a year to operate than a neon sign. If you have multiple signs, that can add up to a decent amount of money, and that's without taking into account any other cost-savings associated with LED lighting. LEDs are the energy efficient choice, and they'll provide you with the benefits of an illuminated sign without driving your costs too high.
LED Lights Are More Durable
Even worse than paying too much for the energy to light your sign is having to pay to replace your channel letters, sometimes before you've even used them. Sadly, this can be a reality with neon channel letters that are easily broken because of the way that they're made. The neon tubes are prone to breakage during shipping and during installation. Not only is it aggravating and time consuming to have to replace a letter that arrives broken or breaks during your sign installation, getting the letters to your location and installed without breakage is going to cost more than it would if you were working with a more durable light.
LED lights, on the other hand, are considerably more durable than neon. They'll cost less to ship and install because they're less fragile and don't have to be packed and handled as cautiously, and it's unlikely that you'll run into the problem of a letter that's damaged before you've even had a chance to use it. LED lights also tend to last longer than neon lights once they're installed – many LED lights can last for at least 50,000 hours – 17 years if the sign is on 8 hours a day. While neon gas is also useful for a long period of time, the transformers in neon lights only last about 8 to 15 years on average.
LED Lights are Safer
The safety of your channel letter signs should also be a concern, as it affects yourself, your employees, your customers, and your property. Neon lights require a much higher electrical voltage than LED lights do. Not only is that a drain on your energy bill, it also increases your odds of an electrical malfunction, which could lead to a fire.
Furthermore, mercury is used in the making of many neon lights, which means that if one of your neon letters breaks, cleanup is potentially hazardous. In fact, you may have to have a broken neon light cleaned up professionally, which can be costly. A broken LED light, on the other hand, poses no more hazard than any other broken glass. Of course jagged pieces should be cleaned up carefully, but at least you won't have any toxic substances to worry about.
There are good reasons why more and more neon signs are being replaced by LED lights. If you're ordering a new sign for your business, ask your sign company about the benefits of LED channel letters for your business.
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