Maxlite

MaxLite

• Where can I buy MaxLite products?

  MaxLite distributes its products through a network of distributors across the United States as well as online. Click the Where to Buy menu above to find your local distributor, an online distributor, or a MaxLite rep who can offer you more assistance.

• Why buy MaxLite products?

  MaxLite offers a full lineup of energy efficient lighting products that have been carefully designed for brilliance, efficiency and longevity. Third party laboratories extensively test all of our products to ensure years of maintenance free illumination.

General Lighting

• What types of lighting are available?

  Today, there are many different lighting technologies available. Due to rising energy prices, government-mandated efficiency levels, and a variety of other factors, the lighting industry is moving towards more efficient technologies. At the forefront of this shift is LED technology, which offers incredible efficiency, more than a decade of life in 12 hours per day operation, appearance on par with incandescent products, and rapidly improving performance and pricing. Due to improvements in LED technology, many projections suggest that over the next decade, LEDs will grow to comprise more than 70 percent of the North American lighting market.
  
  In the meantime, however, there are other energy efficient lighting technologies that deliver energy efficiency and great performance. Specifically, CFL, fluorescent and induction technologies all deliver many of the benefits of LEDs at a lower price point. See the chart below, which provides a snapshot of major technologies and their benefits/deficiencies.
  

• What is a lumen?

  A lumen is a unit of light output and is similar to what horsepower would be for an engine. Simply put, the higher the lumens means that a given light source is brighter. However, it is important to note that there are different types of lumen values. Specifically, delivered lumens are the lumens emitted out of a bulb or fixture, while initial lumens are the lumens produced directly at a light source (a bulb that goes into a fixture for instance). In practice, this means that a metal halide lamp, for example, that produces 15,000 initial lumens, will actually only convert around 30 percent of those initial lumens to delivered lumens out of the fixture. LEDs are nearly always evaluated on the basis of their delivered lumens while many traditional light sources are evaluated on initial lumens produce by a bulb.

• What is a watt?

  A watt is a unit of energy consumption; watts do not specify any amount of light output and are merely a measure of the energy consumed by a lamp or fixture. The table below illustrates this. In this example, an 11-watt LED lamp, a 15-watt CFL lamp, and a 60-watt incandescent lamp all produce the same amount of light output, yet each bulb operates at different wattages.
  

• Why choose energy-efficient lighting?

  In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. market was flooded with lower-quality CFL bulbs that created the perception that consumers must sacrifice light quality for energy efficiency. Today, nothing could be further from the truth. MaxLite CFLs start instantly at full brightness and the proper color, exhibit no flickering, and render colors accurately. At the same time, they typically consume less than a third of the power of a conventional incandescent or halogen product. Meanwhile, MaxLite LED products represent premium lighting at its best; with more than 50,000 hour lifetimes (over 11 years running 12 hours/day), color quality on par with incandescent lamps, and power consumption less than 1/5 of most incandescents, MaxLite’s LED products represent the future in lighting technology. With these new technologies, you can have your cake and eat it too.

LED Products

• What is an LED?

  An LED, or light emitting diode, is a semiconductor diode that emits light when a voltage is applied to it. Unlike traditional light sources, LEDs have no moving parts, create minimal heat, and are rapidly improving and thus becoming viable for many general lighting applications.

• What are the benefits of LED lighting?

  Because LEDs use small semiconductor diodes that illuminate when energized rather than filaments or cathodes that heat up/move to create light, they are dramatically more efficient, produce very little heat relative to traditional products, and have no moving parts, allowing for far longer lifetimes.

• What are some downsides of LED Lighting?

  Nearly all of the downsides of LED lighting are being rendered irrelevant as the technology improves. Today, because individual LEDs are relatively small and only emit light 180 degrees (as opposed to 360 degrees from a filament or cathode), LED fixtures and bulbs must be carefully designed with many LEDs positioned to appear as one single light source that illuminates in all directions. Meanwhile, today’s LED products remain more expensive than traditional lighting products. Again, however, this is rapidly improving, with most projections suggesting an average annual decrease in LED fixture/bulb costs of around 25 percent annually.

• How long will LEDs last?

  LED lifetimes are derived differently than traditional lighting products. For incandescent, fluorescent, CFL and other technologies, the lifetime is the point in time at which 50 percent of the units fail. For LEDs, the lifetime is typically given as the L70 value, or the point in time at which the fixture or bulb will produce 70 percent of the light it produced when new. The chart below illustrates what typical L70 lifetimes of LED products would equate to in years of operation while running at various hours/day, 365 days/year.
  

CFL Products

• How do I safely dispose a CFL that has burned out?

  It is best to recycle CFLs; the EPA has a list of recycling centers that can be found here.

• What should I do if I break a CFL?

  The EPA recommends that if a CFL breaks, you should perform the following steps:
  1. Clear people and pets from the room and air it out for 5 to 10 minutes. If possible, shut off the central forced air heating/AC system.
  2. Collect a piece of stiff paper or cardboard, sticky tape, a damp paper towel or disposable wet wipe and a sealable plastic bag.
  3. Carefully sweep the broken CFL materials into the plastic bag using the sticky tape, paper, and wet wipe/paper towel. Do not use a vacuum as it can spread mercury-containing powder or mercury vapor.
  4. Afterwards, dispose the sealed plastic bag containing the materials.
  
  For more detailed instructions, see here.