A Helpful Guide to Car Interior LED Lights

Brighter, more efficient, and fully custom lighting is possible in your vehicle's interior.

Benjamin Hunting | 

Aug 30, 2024 | 5 min read

Manuel Carrillo III | Capital One

LEDs have become the lighting replacement of choice for a long list of applications, including home, industrial, and even automotive, with many manufacturers switching over to include them in their factory designs. While it's easy to walk into a hardware store and come home with an LED bulb that screws directly into a household light socket, swapping out your vehicle's stock incandescent lighting with LED units can sometimes be a little more complex.

Here's a look at why LED lights are appealing, what options you have when installing them in your vehicle's cabin, and what you need to remember while going through the replacement process.

The What and Why of LED Interior Lights

LEDs have wide-ranging appeal as replacements for more traditional sources of lighting. For starters, they typically last longer than a traditional incandescent bulb, both in terms of how many operational hours they have to offer and how much better they resist damage from impact, shock, and vibration — all of which can occur inside a vehicle's cabin.

There's also a considerable energy savings with LEDs. Although the difference might be smaller for vehicle interior lighting, LED lights use less electricity than any other type of bulb to produce the same amount of light. That translates into reduced heat, too, which is more of a concern when being fitted into tighter spaces inside a car or truck. Along with their versatility, LED lights are small, which further makes installation and placement a breeze.

There's also the question of color. It's possible to find LED lights in the full spectrum of visible color, not to mention multicolor units that can cycle from one hue or intensity to the next via remote or software control. This is much more difficult to achieve with incandescent lighting.

Manuel Carrillo III

Which Interior Bulbs Can Be Replaced With LEDs?

For the most part, if there's a light with a bulb inside your car or truck, chances are you can swap it out with an LED.

It's not a bad idea to start out with an easy installation project so you can get your feet wet in the world of LEDs. This would include any interior lighting that owners conceivably would need to maintain over the vehicle's lifetime since incandescent bulbs tend to draw higher amounts of power and burn out quicker. Dome lights on the ceiling, trunk lights, glovebox lights, footwell lights, and map lights all fall into this category. These typically feature pop-off lenses for easy replacement.

Then there are bulbs that take a little more work to replace. This includes any lighting inside the dashboard — gauge cluster, heating and cooling controls, center stack — lighting behind buttons, and accent lighting that could be built into the dashboard, door panels, or ceiling. Replacing these bulbs with LEDs will often require removing interior panels, which demands tools and patience and maybe an online tutorial.

How to Replace Interior Lights With LEDs

For the most part, replacing an incandescent bulb with an LED bulb inside your car is as simple as unplugging the original and plugging in the new one. There are LED bulbs specifically designed to fit automotive applications, and they cover most of the sizes needed throughout a vehicle's interior, as well as the two primary socket types you are likely to encounter.

Since LED lighting is usually smaller than the halogen bulbs being replaced, the new LED bulb might not be positioned for optimal illumination when you first pop it into the socket. If this is the case, you should look for a bulb that makes use of a spring that can reposition the light source as necessary.

Straightforward replacements mean pulling off the light cover to access the bulb, while anything located behind a panel or in the dashboard will take longer and likely require more automotive knowledge.

It's also possible to install LED light strips to accent factory lighting. These kits typically use adhesive to stick to interior panels and come in versions that must be plugged into your vehicle's 12-volt electrical system. Some of them rely on their own separate battery.

For the adhesive lights, installation is as easy as peeling and sticking where you need them. Plug-in lights require running the power cord to an appropriate connector.

LED Details to Consider Before Installation

LED lights offer many different options and configurations, which means you need to ask yourself some questions before making a purchase.

LED lighting can be brighter than incandescent, so it might be useful to test different bulbs before choosing a set to use. This is particularly true for dashboards, accent lighting, and footwell lighting, as you don't want them to be distractingly bright while driving at night.

There's also a question of temperature — not the actual heat of the light but the shade of white it's creating when illuminated. In addition to offering a gamut of rainbow colors, you can pick up LEDs that range from bright white to cool blue white, with warmer, yellowish temperatures available as well.

It's important that the LED lighting you choose is compatible with the application you have in mind. Dashboard lights, dome lights, and accent lights usually need to be dimmable, while other areas of the cabin might not, so select your bulbs accordingly. If your vehicle requires a specific resistance for certain bulbs, an LED kit that offers that resistance will help avoid flickering and other issues.

Benjamin Hunting

Benjamin Hunting is a writer and podcast host who contributes to a number of newspapers, automotive magazines, and online publications. More than a decade into his career, he enjoys keeping the shiny side up during track days and always has one too many classic vehicle projects partially disassembled in his garage at any given time. Remember, if it's not leaking, it's probably empty.