One of the first calls that come with making illuminated signs is choosing between neon and LED signs. In order to decide whether LED or neon signs are more appropriate for your needs, you should know the main differences between these two. Read on and you will find the basics to help you start with.

No matter if you are looking for business signage or for an amateur project, you want to make the most out of your advertising budget. The lighting can make a difference not just in terms of price, but also regarding the maintenance requirements, the shipping or the installation, the animation effects, the brightness, the occupied volume and, why not, the green factor. We will have a better image of all these features after understanding how LEDs and neon function.

Long story short, LED is the abbreviation from light emitting diodes and represents a semiconductor light source. Smaller than 1 mm2, these diodes are placed close enough for their light to overlap, generating a higher, more glowing and more visible light source. Neon on the other hand is a glass bulb or tube, with two metal electrodes at its ends and that is filled with neon or some other low-pressure gas.

These two definitions alone can help us notice that: LEDs are cheaper, smaller, more economical and easier to work with, compared to neon. For this reason, LED signs have beginning to gain more and more popularity as they occupy less space on an illuminated sign, they can take different shapes, they come in so many colors and they can be programmed to show off some incredible lighting effects. Anyone with basic knowledge in terms of programming microcontrollers can set up breath taking business signage that will stand out in the night, from miles away, no matter how bad is the weather.

Neon because are made of glass and filled with gases are harder to handle and more difficult to transport, to mount and to maintain. Even so, you might be surprised to discover that there are still enough arguments left to sustain neon signs. One of them would be the fact that the schematic and the sign itself are a lot simpler when built with neon simply because it takes one piece of neon instead of a few tens or hundreds of LEDs. The number of electronic connections is considerably smaller, therefore the printed circuit board is a lot easier to project and manufacture.

Another interesting aspect of working with neon is that you can make custom orders. They can have shapes of specific letters and filled with certain gases, they will provide specific colors. Given the fact that LED signs are only 10% cheaper than neon signs, the price difference is small enough to allow you experiment with both of them prior to deciding between the differences.

Our conclusion would be that both LEDs and neon could be particularized in tens of different ways. For this reason, there is no room of comparison in between the two of them.
Go to a specialized service provider and ask more details about its LED signs http://www.shacksign.com/estore and neon signs http://www.shacksign.com/estore/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2 offers. The overwhelming number of options will surprise you.