Upgrading from Halogen to LEDs? Points to remember before you blind oncoming traffic

LED headlights are all the rage in the auto industry these days which are now available on many low-cost vehicles as well. Be it the auto-makers or the consumers, everybody seems to be in a hurry to get that white set of lights on the road.

While halogens are yellowish in color, cheap to manufacture and generate more heat making them last less, LEDs on the other hand are brighter and often throw a wider pattern. They use less energy, last longer and have a much whiter color than halogens. What’s more, a lot of people think they look cool too.

Halogens are incandescent lights that have a tungsten filament inside a bulb. The filament heats up and generates light after electric current passes through it. They differ from regular incandescent bulbs because they are filled with halogen gas instead of argon gas. Halogen bulbs are brighter than regular incandescent bulbs and tend to last longer.

However, with LEDs, an electric current passes through a semiconductor (or diode) to produce light that is brighter and generates less heat. LEDs are almost 90% more efficient than incandescent bulbs, and because they generate less heat, it helps them last much longer than other types of lights. LEDs do dim over time though.

Moreover, LEDs are smaller in size and manufacturers find it easy to embed the headlight into their design aesthetics seamlessly.

A complete LED setup including the reflector and housing is more expensive than a halogen headlight set. So, in a bid to save some bucks, some people tend to plug LED bulbs straight into a halogen reflector scattering the beam all over the place blinding the people in front.

So, if you replace the halogen bulbs with LEDs of the same wattage without switching to a projector, the brightness will become too overwhelmingly higher, the scattered light will become too bright and blind oncoming traffic. However, if you manage to adjust the beam the cool white light of the LEDs, it will be totally worth your efforts.

Luckily, most cars have a screw to adjust the height of the headlights. After you install the LEDs, it’s important to readjust the height of your headlights so that your low beams actually look like low beams and not high beams. You will blind oncoming traffic and annoy drivers in front of you if you skip this step.

You will have to manually adjust it. Take some time and drive around. Throw light on a wall. Take help of a friend. Even if it takes you longer, the clarity and brightness that LEDs offer will be worth it.