Illuminated signage is a popular way to make your business stand out. Not only do LED signs look fantastic, they’re eye-catching and they add an extra dimension to your business’ branding. However, many business owners worry about the cost of leaving their signs on, especially if the sign is going to be running day and night. The good news is that the cost of running your illuminated signs is fairly minimal. By using LED lighting, your signs can stay on 24/7 without putting a huge dent in your power bills!
How Much Does it Cost to Run an LED Light?
In just a few short years, LED lights have become one of the most popular technologies across the world. Well, the world of signage is no different, and LEDs are now used to power almost all types of illuminated signs. LEDs are perfect for signage because they’re bright, they last a long time and they’re incredibly cheap to run. In fact, the average LED light is 75% more efficient than traditional incandescent lighting!
The easiest way to demonstrate the efficiency of LED lighting is to look at the cost of ordinary light bulbs. If you ran a typical 50W halogen light bulb for an hour, it would consume just 0.05 kilowatt-hours of energy. At around 30c per kilowatt-hour, that means it costs $0.015 per hour to run that light. Sounds cheap enough, but over the course of a year that halogen light will cost you $43.20. Compare that to a 4.8W LED bulb that produces the same amount of light for just $4.15 per year!
The Cost of Running LED Signage
The best way to calculate the cost of running an LED sign is to look at the most expensive option: full colour, high resolution signs. These signs are often used to create billboards that look like giant TVs. To do that, they use thousands of tiny LEDs, each consuming about 0.1W of power. To display full colour, each “pixel” of the sign needs a red, blue and yellow LED, so every pixel uses a total of 0.3W. If we know that there are 10,000 pixels in every square metre of signage, we can calculate that 10,000 x 0.3W = 3000W per square metre.
That sounds like a lot of power, but LED signs use a high frequency refresh to turn each LED on and off faster than your eye can see. The high refresh rate cuts power consumption by 75%, so 3000W per square metre becomes 750W (when the sign is at full brightness). So, if a 1m² sign consumes an average of 400W during normal use, it will cost just $1000/year to leave it turned on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.
Saving Money on Your LED Signage
LED signs are incredibly power efficient. If $1000/year sounds like a lot of money then remember that’s for a bright, high resolution outdoor sign. An indoor sign might only cost you half as much to run.
If you want to know how much power a new LED sign will use, you’ll need to speak to your sign maker. Lots of factors can make a difference to a sign’s power consumption, including things like:
- The size and complexity of the sign
- The resolution and pixel density
- Maximum brightness levels
- Indoor signs versus outdoor signs
- How many colours the sign needs to display
- How many hours per day the sign is used
While complex, TV-like LED signs could cost you thousands of dollars in power, simple branding or shop signs might only cost you a few dollars per year to run!
Ready to Invest in LED SIgnage for Your Business? Contact Signs Brisbane Today!
LED lighting has opened up a world of new possibilities for creating stunning signage. Illuminated signs are one of the best ways to make your business stand out, and now they’re also cheap to run. If you’re thinking about investing in new LED signs for your business, get in touch with Signs Brisbane today! We’re Brisbane’s sign making experts, and we have the skills to produce beautiful signs for businesses of all sizes. Our LED signs take advantage of the latest technology to create bright, eye-catching panels that also save you money. We even have options for LED trailer signs if you only need a temporary display.
Contact us today to see examples of our work or if you’d like to start designing a sign of your own!