Are LED downlights worth switching to? The payback maths
Swapping 10 halogen downlights for LEDs saves a typical Australian home about $220 a year — and the changeover usually pays for itself inside a year. Here’s the working.
If you’ve still got halogen downlights, this is about the closest thing to free money in your house. Here’s the maths, shown in full — because that’s the whole point of how we do this.
The swap
A 7W LED downlight gives the same light as a 50W halogen — an 85% cut in power for the same brightness. The typical Australian home has about 10 downlights, often running around 4 hours a day.
The working
Per downlight, per year:
- Power saved: 50W − 7W = 43W
- Energy saved: 43W × 4 h/day × 365 days = ~63 kWh/year
- Dollar saving: 63 kWh ×
36c/kWh = **$23/year per downlight**
Across 10 downlights, that’s about $220–230 a year.
What it costs
LED downlights are cheap — a few dollars each for globe-style replacements, up to ~$25 for a quality fixed downlight. Even allowing for an electrician on fixed fittings, you’re looking at a payback well under a year on the running-cost saving alone.
And LEDs last around 50,000 hours versus roughly 1,000–2,000 hours for halogen — so you also stop replacing blown globes every year, and you cut a real fire-risk heat source out of your ceiling.
The verdict
A genuine quick win: ~$220/year saved, pays back inside a year, lasts for years. If you do one thing off the back of this article, do this one.
Wattages, fitting counts and hours use the sourced assumptions from the Decode Energy Home Energy Saving Guide (AU 2026 edition). Your saving scales with how many fittings you have and how long they’re on.
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