A common tip businesses receive about improving their sustainability is to choose energy-efficient lighting options. Today, companies can keep traditional incandescent fixtures or convert to CFL or LED. For those that select the first two options, they sacrifice efficiency for a lower purchase price.

Yet what they may not realize is that over the long run, LEDs can save them a significant amount of money in both energy savings and reduced maintenance costs. It just requires a little long-range vision to see how they can benefit virtually any business. If you’re looking for a surefire way to cut spending, making the switch might be the fastest and easiest option to do so.

Here are some important facts to keep in mind:

Comparing the Initial Costs

What sticks out first to most people when comparing widely available types of lights is the purchase price. Although LED has come down considerably in recent years, it’s still the most expensive choice at the onset. A typical incandescent bulb will cost around $1, and a CFL replacement should run about $2 each. By comparison, a standard LED bulb costs around $8. Still, that’s a far cry from the earliest days of the technology, where it wasn’t unusual to pay as much as $50 for a single LED. But for a business looking at short-term expenditures, LED might seem like a needless extravagance. However, these fixtures end up saving you a lot thanks to their increased efficiency.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

Of course, how much a light costs initially isn’t the only factor to consider. There’s also the matter of how much you will need to spend to keep it lit. This is where the larger initial investment in LED pays dividends for businesses.

Consider these points:

• LED uses just 10 watts. An incandescent typically uses 60 watts or more.
• Assuming a business pays the average rate of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, it costs just $30 to light for its entire 25,000-hour life span. In comparison, the typical incandescent adds up to about $180 for the same 25,000 hours.

Still, that’s assuming a traditional light will last just as long as its more energy-efficient counterpart. Nothing could be further from the truth. The average life span of an old filament-based option is only 1,200 hours. This means you would need to replace an incandescent bulb 20 times to match the output you would get from a single LED. When factoring in multiple locations, the savings from this type of lighting multiplies substantially. If you leave the lights on in your facility 24 hours a day, installing or retrofitting LED fixtures can end up paying for itself within two or three years.

Any company seeking a relatively simple way to save money would do well to investigate switching to LED lighting. Don’t let the initial price turn you off — these fixtures more than make up for it in the long run.