IKEA Flips Switch to All-LED Lighting

Big-box retailer IKEA will convert its full lighting range to LED, selling only LED bulbs and LED lamps by 2016. The company also is changing more than one million light sources inside the IKEA stores to LED and other more efficient lighting.

IKEA isn’t the first retailer to highlight energy-saving lightbulbs. In 2007, Wal-Mart announced it would sell private label CFLs under its Great Value brand label.

IKEA definitely has some educating to do when it comes to letting Americans know about the benefits of LEDs. According to Wakefield Research, only 27 percent of Americans know that LED bulbs last 20 years, and 34 percent of Americans don’t know that LED bulbs use less energy.

An IKEA Global Study found:

• Slightly less than one-half of Americans (43 percent) have at least one LED bulb in their house, compared to China (80 percent), Russia (65 percent) and Sweden (61 percent).
• Only one-third (34 percent) of Americans say LED lights provide similar lighting quality to incandescent bulbs. That’s compared to China (77 percent) and Russia (61 percent).
• More than half (52 percent) of Americans have seen an increase in their home electric bill over the last 12-24 months.
• 69 percent of Americans say that lighting accounts for up to 40 percent of their electric bill.
• When told of LED savings, 86 percent of Americans say they’re interested in switching.

The IKEA global survey was conducted by YouGov among 6,000 consumers in China, Russia, Germany, UK, the United States and Sweden in July 2012.

IKEA’s LED initiative follows past IKEA US sustainability actions such as the phase-out of plastic bags in 2007 and incandescent bulbs in 2010.