Which LED bulbs can I use in my garage door opener?

LED and compact fluorescent light bulbs have become very popular with homeowners because of the energy savings they provide. For electric garage door openers, it is much better to use LED lightbulbs because they last 25% longer than compact fluorescent bulbs and don’t disrupt the communication signal between a door opener and its remote control.

First, a little bit of history. What does LED stand for?

Initially used in electronic products, a light-emitting diode (LED) bulb is a semiconductor device that emits light when an electric current is passed through it.

Unlike the well-known incandescent lightbulb that uses only 5% of the energy supplied to produce light, wasting the rest in heat, an LED has much more efficient energy use. LED bulbs can be low-output (dim), used as indicators on home electronics and in holiday lights, and high-output (bright) that are used in general-purpose lighting.

The advantages of LED bulbs

Here are the basic advantages of LED bulbs:

• Considerable energy savings (around 85%) compared to incandescent lighting products.
• Their service life is about 25,000 hours, based on an average of 3 hours a day of use. This is very practical if the only lighting in your garage comes from your door opener.
• They produce light instantly, like incandescent bulbs, with no warm-up time.
• They produce very little heat.

Not all LED bulbs can be used in an electric garage door opener

Chamberlain, the parent company to the Chamberlain, LiftMaster and Craftsman (Sears) product lines, has specified which brands of LED bulbs can be used in its openers:

If you need additional advice…

Then just contact a garage door specialist in your area. They know about all brands of garage door openers. If you want to change your garage door opener, you can request an online quotation from them.

As well, if you would like to change your garage door or get an idea what a new door would look like on your house, use a design center like the one from Garaga, or get some inspiration from their image gallery.