RV Light fixtures are easy to replace. It is very EASY to modify your RV to reduce your lighting power consumption by UP to 75-85% over your current lighting.

It’s EASY to do. I swear. Even I can do it!

Background articles on RV Lighting

Don’t start this article without reading my starting article on all of the different types of RV lighting that exist – it’s quite amazing at all the lighting apps there are for an RV.

You don’t have to change an entire fixture, you can change the RV bulbs from incandescent to led by simply swapping out the bulbs with an LED made to fit in the fixture.

Changing an entire RV Fixture

I wanted to swap out an entire RV light fixture.

Why?

1. I have never changed a fixture.
2. the LED lights I was examining required a custom fixture.
3. the current fixtures were too hot with standard 921 incandescent lights. This made sleeping in the summer uncomfortable.

Steps to change your Light Fixture

Typical Light Fixture you can purchase

This fixture has a custom fit to the LED light that is in it. Therefore, a straight LED replacement won’t make sense for this fixture. I wanted to try this different size LED light so I just ordered the fixture. Replacement RV lighting fixtures are about $10 or so.

Here I’m showing the same light fixture with the Bezel attached. Don’t get a fixture without the Bezel.

While hard to see in the picture above, there are 25 white LED’s in their light. This allows manufacturers to user CHEAPER individual LED’s instead of more expensive LED’s with higher light output.

How to think critically about how many LEDs it takes to make a bright light

A good benchmark for LED’s is that 10-15 single LEDs will replace a standard 921, you can see that the manufacturer doubled the amount of LED’s to get about the same light. In other words this means that the LED’s they used are less than 1/2 as bright as the industry standard led light (as of this writing). That might be a good trade-off – If you have control of the plastic FIXTURE – like this project does have.

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If you pop off the plastic diffuser (the plastic thing that helps spread the light everywhere) you’ll see there are screws you can unscrew.

Go ahead and unscrew them!

Here the screws are unfastened.

My “wire nuts” – the things holding the fixture to the RV wires – did not come unscrewed – they were crimped.

So I simply clipped the wires on this OLD fixture (not the RV wires – the ones going into the fixture) and then stripped the insulation back about 1/2 inch.
I went ahead and wired in the new RV light fixture.

Now you can connect your new RV light fixture.

In case you are wondering … you fasten black wires to black wires and white to white.

Next, I simply screwed in the four screws which I “borrowed” from the old fixture. These don’t need to be long or strong as the fixture is very light weight and the RV wall/ceiling materials are not very thick.

Here is the final project.

The LED lights put out a much cleaner light. Since this is above the headboard on the bedroom, the area is NOTICEABLY cooler using the LED’s.

You can see the Incandescent light on the right.

My wife loves her new LED light fixture.

Conclusions on swapping your Light Fixtures

• Swapping light fixtures is easy.
• Anyone can do it with a screwdriver and wire stripper/wire cap
• Get the fixtures you want.
• the LED lights are awesome – we love them.
• The new fixture has a better button placement.
• What are you waiting for!!!

Replacement Led Light Fixtures for RVs

921 bulb replacement information can be found in this short article.

I’ve actually installed these replacements in my RV and can truly speak about them truthfully.

So please take advantage of my experience  – for example – you can’t ignore the lumens value!

The light bulb we are trying to replace is called a 921 light bulb with a “wedge style base”.

Here are some 921 bulb specs that you might find interesting. This bulb runs on 12 Volts DC (all/most RV systems operate on this system).

This 921 bulb in the wedge style consumes about 18Watts of electricity. I’m thinking this puts out about 280 lumens (hard to find GOOD data on this). So the efficiency of this type of bulb is 15 Lumens per Watt, which is fairly low for an incandescent.

921 wedge style light

18 Watts doesn’t sound like much, but when you are boondocking and running 10-15 lights you can consume 200 Watts which will drain your battery fairly quickly.

How incandescent lights work – very very simple explanation

For the technical person the way the incandescents work is that they heat a filament in glass bulb and the filament will then radiate light from the heated filament. Since energy is comprised of BOTH heat and light and the 921 bulbs get VERY hot, common sense will tell you that this large portion of heat is simply wasted energy. Or worse, in the summer, it will make your air conditioner work harder.

How LED lights work – very very simple explanation

LED lights work VERY differently. Without getting too technical, the way the material is constructed causes an interesting microscopic (actually smaller still) structure. When electricity is applied to the structure, the electrons “jump around” in such a way that they will emit a photon of light. Since there are zillions of electrons working hard there are zillions of photons which means lots of light for you. The SUPER COOL idea is that this really does not cause any heat to speak of.

RV52 editor explaining in his own words more on LED lights

https://youtu.be/EipUau7blvI

The application I FIRST tested the LED replacements is pictured here. Notice that any light only needs to send out light in a half circle (180 degrees) :

Acceptable led light replacements for rv lighting 921 bulb wedge style

Find the replacements by running this easy part selector.

I spent LOTS of time on this selector guide. It is FREE and costs you nothing and SAVES you time!

RV LED Selector Guide

LED wedge lights RELATED listings

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