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How Do LED Lights Change Color

Find the answer to the frequently asked LED Lights related question: How Do LED Lights Change Color?
So many times the question has been asked, “How do LED lights change color?” Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to that question because the mechanics of how LED’s work would first need to be understood. The short answer, however, is that LED’s don’t change color, rather different diodes receive current giving the illusion that the color changes. Because there are so many uses for LED lights from Christmas decorations to traffic signals, it is important to understand the technology behind these amazing lights. For the first time in history, artificial light is able to recreate virtually every color in the visible light spectrum.

LED Basics – Construction

The first thing to understand when questioning, “How do LED lights change color?” is to see an LED light as a series of diodes that emit light when electricity is introduced. This electricity flows from positive to negative, and depending on how each diode is manufactured, a different wavelength of the light spectrum will be emitted during the transference of energy. In other words, each diode has the capacity to produce a single color, and when it is powered, it gives off that color of the light spectrum.

How Color Changing LED Lights are Manufactured

An even more simplified way of viewing this is to look at the most basic colors in an LED, Red/Green/Blue, that when ‘lit’ together produce white light. Now, in order to produce a color-changing LED, several diodes must be in the light, each having a different capacity for a single color. As electricity passes from diode to diode, the LED will appear to change colors. Should all of the diodes be powered at once, the result is white light.

Innovative Techniques for Producing Color-Changing Lights

Although earliest LED technology merely utilized the RGB diodes to produce white light, scientists eventually went on to experiment with producing bright whites, and blue whites. This technique evolved to greater variations of colored lighting than was ever possible before with incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. Now, by mixing varying amounts of the three primary colors, red-yellow-blue, literally any color in the visible spectrum can be produced. In other types of light, the globe, or lens, would have needed to be colored, unlike LED’s that actually produce the color in question.

Again, there is no easy answer to the question, “How do LED lights change color?” It would almost take a physicist to be able to accurately understand the workings of these phenomenal lights. There is one thing that consumers are aware of, however, and that is the fact that never before has more realistic, vibrant color been available in artificial lights. Perhaps it isn’t necessary to understand how they work, but more importantly, that they do work to provide energy efficient, eco friendly light that can’t be matched by any other type of lamp on the market. Color-changing LED’s are available for a number of applications, and while the technology is still in its infancy, these lights never cease to amaze.