Why it's best to use RED LEDs behind Red Faces

[Kgirl]

This is a great comparison to show why it's always best to use Red LEDs behind Red Faces, and not use White for everything.  

 

On the left is the one of the brightest white LEDs on the market...The .8watt BrightON II LED Module, on the right the BrightON Ruby Red…also .8 watts per module and probably thee brightest Red LED module on the Market. 

 

 

 

 

When we put a 7328 White acrylic sign face over the white we get a luminance of 240 Foot Candles of Light right on the sign surface .  Now we’ll switch the White acrylic with another 7328 White Acrylic with 3M Red 3630-30 Applied Translucent vinyl and see the results.

 

 

 

 

Red is very hard to capture using an iPhone, but believe me…..in person the contrast between the channels that has the White LEDS vs the Red LEDs is large.  The Red is overwhelmingly brighter than the White with a luminance on the sign face with 47 Foot Candles….and the White LEDs with a luminance of ONLY 18 Foot Candles.

 

 

 

 

When using White LEDs behind a Red face you will lose 50% of the luminance on the sign face based on how the lens filters the wavelengths.  This is why it’s best to use Colors behind Colors….Most of the time!

 

 

[Salsa Signman]

We had a long time Mexican Restaurant customer switch out his clear red 15 mm neon for LEDs.  He thought our price was too high for LEDs so he used an unexperienced sign company and they installed cheap white Chinese LEDs behind his old faces. His faces went from red to pink (rosa) at night. Needless to say he wasn’t happy with pink faces… He pointed this out to the other Sign company, but they would not fix it. Plus, they had no clue what they were doing with the parking lot lighting as they tried replacing 400 W metal halide lamps with LEDs. He immediately called us to fix his parking lot lights because he was losing business because his parking lot was dark. He lived with the pink letters at night for a while and just recently hired us to install red LEDs and remove the white ones. He’s happy now with red faces again at night.

[Rocco]

A long time ago I did a comparison between the different colors of neon with my eldest daughter.  It was for a science fair project.   We took 7-8 different neon samples (i had a ton at the time) and put a light meter on the various colors.   Clear red put out the most light by a good margin.   i don't have the info anymore because that was about 30 years ago but it does make sense to put red LED's behind red plex.    And we used to put red neon behind red faces - way back when - so red modules behind red faces is logical.