#LED vs Incandescent Dome / Map Lights

Michael R. T. Jensen

Updated: 10 Oct 2024

After too long of a wait, I have recieved my LED bulbs for my front dome / map lights. These bulbs are angled towards the rear of the car, to provide illumination for the rear seats as well. There is no rear dome light on my Focus, due to the sunroof being in the way.

These were the last bulbs needed to have my LED conversion fully finished. There are no incandescent or halogen bulbs anywhere on or in the car the car anymore. A post covering all of my exterior LED conversions can be found here: https://naturehealth.fit/post/wpl4xvz/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3Caside%3E%3Cdiv class="block">

These bulbs are 6,000K in colour, to match my other white LEDs on the car, This gives a much cleaner light over the 2,800K incandescents, while also being brighter. Of course the other benefits of LEDs are present such as a long service life, cool temperature, and low power consumption.

I decided to make a GIF showcasing a phenomenon that hadn’t occurred to me. Like my oem incandescent bulbs, these dim to shut off. However, like all electronics that are plugged in, there is a minimal amount of power running to the sockets even when powered off. Being LED, they require very little power to even begin to light up. This utilizes that very small amount of current to be dimly lit even while being off, as seen at the end of the GIF. This light is not bright enough to see, except when looking directly at the bulbs at night. It does a dim glow, similar to a glow in the dark material.

As can be seen, it’s roughly the brightness of the illumination from behind my sunroof control buttons. This isn’t something to worry me for battery life, being that with the current that these bulbs take up at even full brightness my car battery would take weeks of sitting to drain enough not to have a proper start up. It is worth noting for those of you that would be annoyed by such such an event, however it can be avoided by going with either a bulb with built in load resistors, or adding load resistors in the power line of the vehicle before the socket. Both add extra cost, and the in line fix adds extra work. Most vehicles will also completely shut off any power after five to ten minutes of the vehicle being turned off. Again worth noting is that this phenomenon does not taking up any more power than my stock incandescent bulbs took up while appearing fully off. A fix is only needed if the dimmed lights bother you. As my switch to turn on each individual bulb is by pressing on the bulb, I appreciate the dimly lit area.

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Comments

I don’t know if I could do LEDs inside. I like the yellow color of incandescents more.

You should hook up my car now 😃
So how much energy are you saving by going LED(alltogether?)
(I went home early, not well)

Can’t wait to get mine installed!

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