Upgrading to LED Lighting in Your Caravan or Motorhome

Winter Project Guide

A practical guide from Bedam Leisure — caravan & motorhome specialists

Dark by half four, rain on the roof and the van sitting on the drive doing nothing. This is exactly the time of year for the jobs you never fancy in August — and converting your interior lighting to LED is the pick of them. It's warm, dry, indoor work, it needs almost no tools, and it quietly fixes the biggest everyday drain on your leisure battery.

We sell a lot of 12V lighting, and we get back a lot of parts that could have stayed on the shelf if one question had been answered first: what have you actually got up there? So that's where we'll start.

Why it's worth doing at all

Lighting is the load you leave switched on for hours at a stretch, which is why it dominates your overnight consumption in a way the water pump never will. Most caravans and motorhomes built before the mid-2010s left the factory with halogen interior spots — usually MR11 dichroics drawing 10W to 20W each. Ten of those at 10W is 100W, which at 12 volts is well over eight amps. Four hours of an autumn evening and you've taken somewhere around 33Ah out of the battery.

Swap the same ten fittings for 1.2W LEDs and you're pulling roughly one amp in total — about 4Ah over the same evening. On a 100Ah lead-acid battery, where you only really want to use the top half, that is the difference between two nights off-grid and most of a week. It is the single cheapest thing you can do to make a van usable without hook-up.

There's a second benefit people forget until they've had it. Halogens run hot. If you've ever found a scorch mark on a lampshade or felt the heat coming off a reading light you left on while you read, that's the energy a halogen wastes as heat rather than light. LEDs barely get warm, so the fitting lasts longer and so does everything around it.

1 Identify

First, work out what fitting you've actually got

Turn the 12V off at the control panel, let anything hot cool down, then take one bulb out and look at it. Nearly everything you'll find in a British caravan or motorhome is one of five bases, and telling them apart is the whole job.

The mistake we see most often: ordering MR16 when the van has MR11. They look identical in a photo. MR11 reflectors are about 35mm across the front, MR16 about 50mm. Put a tape measure across the glass and you'll never get it wrong.

Two more things worth knowing before you buy. First, your "12V" system is nothing of the sort in practice — with the mains charger on or the solar working it sits comfortably above 13 volts, and a tow car's alternator can push the supply higher again. Proper leisure-grade fittings are built for that range; the very cheapest generic LEDs are not, which is why they fail in a season. Second, some LED capsules are polarity-sensitive, G4s especially. If a new bulb doesn't light, pull it out, turn it 180 degrees and try again before you write it off as faulty.

2 Decide

Swap the bulb, or change the whole light?

A bulb swap is the cheapest route and takes ten minutes for the whole van. It's the right answer when the fittings themselves are sound — clear lenses, switches that still click properly, no yellowing.

Be aware of one limitation, though. A dichroic halogen reflector is shaped to focus light from a tiny glowing filament. An LED isn't a point source, so a retrofit bulb in an old reflector can throw a narrower or slightly patchier beam than the halogen did. It's still perfectly usable, but if you've been meaning to replace tired fittings anyway, a purpose-built LED light will look better and give you features the old one never had.

3 Upgrade

Spotlights and reading lights: where touch control earns its keep

If you are changing fittings rather than bulbs, this is where modern 12V lighting has genuinely moved on. Touch dimming means you can take the brightness right down for an evening without wiring in a separate dimmer — and because the dimming is built into the fitting, you're not gambling on whether a non-dimmable LED will flicker on an old rotary dimmer. A built-in USB or USB-C port beside the bunk also saves you a socket and a trailing cable, which in a campervan is worth more than it sounds.

Want charging built in? The Dimatec Chrome Flexi LED with USB (£29.99) is a 1W, 3000K warm-white reading light with a USB port in the base — 50 lumens aimed exactly where you want it.

4 Finish

Strip lighting: the upgrade that makes it feel designed

Once the main lights are sorted, a run of strip lighting under the overhead lockers is what makes a van feel properly finished. It's also the most practical light in the place — soft enough to leave on all evening, bright enough to find your way to the washroom without waking anyone.

Two practical points. Watch the total load: a 5W-per-metre strip over five metres is 25W, a little over two amps, so run it on its own fused feed rather than tapping it off a lighting circuit and hoping. And pick the right IP rating for the location — a strip in a locker or along an awning rail wants proper sealing, because condensation finds bare solder joints every time.

Don't forget outside. A proper external Dimatec 12V awning light (£32.99) over the door beats a head torch every time — or for awnings and tents, the Quest SuperNova 120 LED light (£39.99) runs from 12V or mains on a 5-metre lead.

One last honest warning

If you buy very cheap unbranded LEDs, there's a fair chance one of them will put an audible buzz through a DAB radio or a 12V television. It's the driver electronics inside the bulb, not your aerial or your set. If new interference appears at the same time as new lighting, switch that one fitting off and listen again — you'll have your culprit in thirty seconds, and it'll be the bulb that cost a pound.