Are LED's illegal?

I was wondering if putting LED lighting in your car is illegal? like LED strips? see them for sale everywhere but can you actually install them or are you breaking the law? i get if people installed blue lights and put them close to windows or something it would make your car look like a police car or something but what about other colours and putting them around your doors etc.

Reply 1

epicraj

they're not illegal, many car manufacturers like BMW and mercedes have built in interior mood LED lighting systems, so does my car. as long as the lights are not mounted to the exterior of the car it should be fine

Reply 2

IWMTom

Original post by Nick6501

Interior is fine.

Reply 3

Nuffles

Exterior "marker" lights are fine as long as they adhere to the colour regulations (white up front and red on the back). Think DRLs.

What's illegal is replacing your headlight dipped/main beam bulbs with LED or HID if they weren't specced/fitted at the factory. Retrofitting a proper HID projector (Morimoto or similar) into your headlight is illegal but it shouldn't be IMO. You could probably get away with it if your car has halogens but a higher specced model had HIDs and you swapped the whole headlight assembly over, but that's a grey area AKAIK. It's also quite a big job on some cars - I looked into it when I had my B5.5 Passat and W8 HID headlights bolted right on but you needed the ride height sensors for each wheel fitted as well and coded into the ECU to self-level the headlights.

You can fit some cheap LED strips on your front bumper or change out your interior lights, but those strip DRLs are usually awful quality and will fail or partially fail within 12 months.