How To Improve Your Interior Car Lights
Whether you leave for work before the sun rises or regularly drive after it sets, you have to spend some time in a dark vehicle. When you need to find something in your back seat or check an interior compartment, you need a bit of light. Unfortunately, your car, truck, or SUV may not be as bright as you’d like. If you want to get more out of your interior car lights, upgrading to LED lighting probably makes sense.
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The Benefits of LED Lights Inside Your Vehicle
Gone are the days when you had to deal with stock lighting inside your vehicle. With the advent of LED interior lights, you can upgrade your vehicle’s existing lights. When you do, you are likely to notice some immediate benefits. Here are the pros of LED lights:
- Efficiency: LED lights typically use less energy than their conventional counterparts. Whenever you can conserve energy inside your vehicle, you are sure to notice an improvement. That is, by swapping out traditional lights for an LED alternative, you help your vehicle conserve energy and operate more efficiently.
- Brightness: LED lights are often brighter than standard ones. As you know, your vehicle has many nooks, curves, and compartments in its interior. When you install LED lights, you increase the overall visibility of the space inside your vehicle. This allows you to see more parts of your car. For finding items in a dark area, upgrading to LED lights likely makes sense.
- Longevity: Like essentially all types of lightbulbs, the interior lights in your vehicle have a limited lifespan. While LED lights do not last forever, they have a significantly longer useful life than conventional bulbs. In fact, LED bulbs often shine brightly for 15,000 hours.
- Affordability: The price of LED interior lights has fallen considerably in recent years. If you want to upgrade your car’s existing lights, you are likely to find that LED lights are either about the same price or even more affordable than incandescent ones.
Reasons to Install LED Lights
Part of the experience of owning a car, truck or SUV is thinking of ways to turn your stock vehicle into the custom machine of your dreams. While you have thousands of options for upgrading your vehicle, adding LED lights is a popular way to do so. Here are some of the custom reasons to install LED lights in your vehicle’s interior:
- Colors: You don’t have to stick to white light when you install LED lights inside your vehicle. Because LEDs come in a seemingly endless number of shades, you can choose the perfect color for accenting the interior of your car.
- Clarity: If you are not in love with the yellowish hue of your car’s existing interior lights, upgrading to LED lights may be a wise decision. Because LED lights tend to produce bright, white light, you achieve clarity when swapping out incandescent bulbs.
- Innovation: The sky is the limit when it comes to LED lights inside your vehicle. That is, you do not have to confine lighting to existing spaces. Because LED lights come in a variety of styles, you can stretch light into dark spaces inside your car. You can also install LED lights outside your vehicle to give it an instantly innovative appearance.
Swapping Incandescent Bulbs for LED Lights
Whether you are looking for improved efficiency, better lighting, or a custom enhancement for your vehicle, installing LED lights helps you achieve your goals. If you are wondering how to change interior car lights to LED, the process is likely not as difficult as you may suspect.
Anywhere inside your vehicle where there are incandescent bulbs is eligible for an LED upgrade. That is, you may want to tackle your vehicle’s dome light, glove box light, trunk light, and other lights. You do not, however, have to replace all incandescent bulbs at once. Instead, you can choose which bulbs to swap out for LED upgrades.
When you are ready to begin your interior car lights project, follow these steps:
5 Steps to Spruce Up Your Interior Lights
1. Locate lights
Depending on your vehicle’s make and model, you may have one or several incandescent lights. To change incandescent bulbs for LED ones, first decide which lights you want to address. For your first project, it may be easiest to begin with the central dome light. This light is likely easy to see and access.
2. Remove bulb cover
Many, although not all, interior lights have a lens or cover to protect the bulb from damage. If the light you want to upgrade to LED has a cover, you must remove it to access the bulb. Your vehicle’s owner’s manual likely tells you how to remove the lens cover. If not, there is a good chance the cover either twists off or simply pops loose. Alternatively, you may need to remove a couple screws to work the bulb cover free. Regardless, you must be careful when detaching the cover to avoid damaging it.
3. Pick an LED bulb
Not every LED bulb fits inside every type of socket. Therefore, you must be sure to choose a compatible bulb when ordering a replacement for your incandescent bulb. The most important part of selecting the correct bulb is the connector. Put simply, you must find a bulb that has a compatible connection.
4. Connect the LED bulb
Once you have a compatible LED bulb in the correct shade, you are ready to connect it. Bulbs usually have a positive and negative side. After connecting the bulb, test it to ensure it works before reattaching the lens cover. If it does not, try turning the bulb the other direction to be sure you have installed it correctly.
5. Replace the lens cover
After you have installed the bulb and checked that it works, you are ready to replace the lens cover. Simply reverse the steps you used to remove it. Before you do, though, clean dust, dirt, and debris from the inside of the lens cover to ensure you do not obscure your new LED light.
Get More From Your Interior Lights
Few simple projects yield higher results than installing LED interior car lights. Now that you know how to change interior car lights to LED, you are ready to maintain, repair or upgrade your vehicle’s interior lighting scheme. You can get the parts you need at your local AutoZone Store. If the job is too big for you, seek out one of our Preferred Shops to help you do the job.
