When you’re installing integrated LED light fixtures in your office or home, plan ahead.

When an integrated LED fails, you must replace the entire fixture. Integrated LEDs do not operate with light bulbs. Instead, they have built-in light chips that cannot be removed and replaced. The light diodes are permanently wired onto a circuit board inside the unit. There is no socket or replaceable bulb. Instead, the entire fixture must be replaced.

Many integrated fixtures wire their diodes in series, meaning that when one single chip or connection burns out, the entire circuit breaks and the light goes dark permanently.

Rather than burning out suddenly like an incandescent bulb, integrated fixtures usually go through lumen depreciation, slowly losing brightness until they are no longer useful.

And often the internal power supply or transformer fails before the LED chips do with the same result: a non-working light fixture.

So start with a plan. When buying the light fixtures consider buying extra fixtures to use as replacements when needed. That should at least give you a little more time to find suitable replacement fixtures.

But don’t count on finding exactly the same LED fixture years down the road when yours fails. Like all industries, the LED light fixture world is powered by innovation. Designers are improving designs all the time. So future LED fixtures are likely to differ in size, shape, and lumens.

You can compare the LED light fixture to tiles you use for your flooring. Tile distributors recommend buying 10% extra for installation hiccups and future repair situations.

The typical lifespan of an LED light is between 25,000 and 50,000 hours, which translates to roughly 10 to 20 years of normal household use. Office buildings, on the other hand, generally keep fixtures lit 24/7, calling for more frequent replacement.

The difference between an integrated LED fixture and a fixture using LED light bulbs is that the latter allows you to replace the bulbs when they go dark, extending the functionality of the light fixture itself.