Courtesy Light

Courtesy Light

How To Improve Your Car Interior Lights with LED Car Lights

Have you climbed into your car late at night and wished that your overhead interior courtesy light was brighter so that you could easily find those keys that you have just dropped, or that the faint light inside your boot could properly illuminate the entire space, so you could see what you were doing as you loaded up your car? Unfortunately conventional car interior light bulbs are just not powerful enough to do the job properly. However, this could be a different matter if you replaced them with the latest LED bulbs.

The term LED stands for Light Emitting Diode and it means that these upgrade bulbs do not rely on a standard metal filament and glass bulb to create light. LED light is much more powerful, whilst also being purer and cleaner than standard car bulbs. Alongside the obvious benefits of improved light output, LED's also have other additional properties that make them particularly useful within the automotive setting.

LED car bulbs are much tougher and more rugged than normal bulbs because there is no delicate metal filament or glass bulb to break, and they last considerably longer, over 50,000 hours in most cases. Their extremely long service life means that you will probably change your car before you need to change your LED's. In addition, LED bulbs come in a range of colours including white, blue and red, so they can be used to replace overhead courtesy lights, map lights, boot lights and door opening lights.

Interior LED car bulbs are available as wedge bulbs, festoon bulbs and dome bulbs. Typically the wedge and festoon LED's use 1-4 LED chips, whilst the dome LED bulbs can contain between 12-24. Therefore for areas that require a lot of light, like the overhead interior light, or the boot light, it is normal to use a LED dome, whist for smaller areas like number plate lights, or courtesy lights, the festoon or wedge LED's are more suitable.

There is no doubt that fitting LED interior car bulbs will really light up the inside of your car at night. Ideally you should normally upgrade the main interior overhead light first, however once you have done this and seen how great it looks you will soon want to upgrade all of your car interior lights with LED bulbs. They are available in a range of colours, sizes and fittings there will always be a range of LED lights to suit your needs.

About the Author

Jo Alexander is an online, freelance journalist and keen windsurfer. Jo lives by the sea in Essex.

My Mazda 323 battery keeps going flat. The key courtesy light is permanently on. Any help out there?

3 guesses:

1 - remove the bulb from the key courtesy light (a Chiltons manual in the Library might tell you how to do this)

2 - if nothing else which matters is on the same circuit, remove the fuse which control the light in question (owners manual or Chiltons can tell you)

3 - Fix the problem (probably costly)

Good Luck

Plummet - Damaged (Blinding Lights Remix)