Monday, June 6, 2016

Why You Should Change Your RV Lights To LED - RV & Camper LED Lighting

I have wanted to share an inexpensive mod you can make to your RV, trailer or camper that will help you use one tenth of your previous battery usage. RV camper LED lighting is a change you should make if you have the old halogen bulbs in your RV.

We always dry camp and though we have a generator, we still would run our batteries down in the evening between the pump and the kids coming in and turning on the lights in our trailer. I changed almost all over our bulbs from halogen to LED in our trailer and I was amazed at how little battery drain we had now turning the lights on at night as compared to before. Our batteries were still almost fully charged the next morning.

RV LED bulbs, LED lighting for the camper


I ordered my RV LED replacement bulbs from Amazon. They were the cheapest I found at less than $25.

Replacing Your RV Light Bulbs To LED:

1. First pop off your light covers and see what kind of bulbs you need. Ours were the kind with the flat base that you slide in and out of the light socket. Do not pull out the white base, but just the bulb is what you remove.

2. Count how many bulbs you will need. In our case we opted to test them first with one order so we left a few of the old halogen bulbs in spots we never use like the upper bunk bed reading lights.

halogen vs. LED lighting in the RV
Notice how brown the bulb sockets are. The old halogen bulbs burn very hot. 
3. Once you change the bulbs you will notice how much cooler the new LED bulbs burn. This can only be safer as well.

LED lighting for the RV

My husband and I both liked how nice and white the new bulbs were as opposed to the old bulbs which cast a bit of a yellow light.

Here's another battery saving tip. Add some of the inexpensive LED tap lights as nightlights in your trailer or RV. I have some over each bed, one over my kitchen sink and one under the bathroom medicine cabinet. They make perfect night lights to light up your dark RV and the batteries last a really long time.

LED tap lights for the RV

The tap light below is three years old and I am still using the original triple A batteries. I have seen them at Walmart and the hardware store or you can order from Amazon.
You can see more of my LED lights I use in this post.

Read all our camping and RV tips here.

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5 comments:

  1. We switched a lot of our RV lights over too. It does seem to make a difference with the battery. But, it tends to give me a headache if I use them for very long. That kind of light has a flicker that you can't see but it can cause problems for some. That's why I've been hesitant to change the bulbs in our home. It's sure nice to have light and not worry so much about the battery though. During the day, we have a solar panel hubby puts on the roof that recharges the batteries. That works great! :-D

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  2. We haven't noticed any flickering and actually prefer the light to the old yellow halogen but I did hope to not get the LED bulbs that look grey. Thankfully these were a nice bright white. Love the solar panel idea. I hope to upgrade to those and ditch the stinky generator.

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  3. I switched out the center bank of lights for the nice bright white ones and over the beds and dinette I put in the warm tone ones. Now I don't have to worry about the battery getting drained quickly or the hot lights.

    Great investment

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  4. If you want warmer looking light, look for LEDs in the 2700°K range - higher numbers are more blueish

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