2025 Global LED Lighting Market Trend- Database and Player Strategies

According to the latest TrendForce report "2025 Global LED Lighting Market Trend- Database and Player Strategies", in 2024, the LED general lighting market experienced negative growth as sluggish demand in key regions across Europe, the United States, and China weighed on performance, leading to overall revenue declines among leading lighting companies. In contrast, the LED smart lighting and niche LED horticultural lighting segments showed countertrend growth. Toward 2025, the LED general lighting market is expected to rebound, driven primarily by the demand for LED replacements during renovation of existing installations and by the increasing demand for high-quality LEDs as well as healthy, comfortable, and smart lighting products. Meanwhile, LED horticultural lighting is poised to enter its next growth phase, fueled by a resurgence in vertical.

General Lighting Market

According to TrendForce analysis, in 2024 the market size measured in USD contracted significantly. This was primarily due to several factors: the US Federal Reserve's continued high interest rate policy, severe deflation in China, persistent weakness in Europe amid economic and geopolitical turmoil, and the impact of yen depreciation in Japan. The three core markets-the US, Europe, and China-have long been the main sources of lighting demand, but all faced challenges in 2024 that dragged down overall LED lighting market value. However, as market demand improved somewhat in 4Q24 with accelerating LED penetration, the overall decline was slightly mitigated. The LED lighting market value fell by 4.2% to USD 56.058 billion.

Entering 2025, the global economy is expected to improve moderately. The construction sector-closely linked to the LED lighting industry-is projected to show signs of a gentle recovery. New installations, renovation projects, and public infrastructure initiatives, including those in the slowly recovering municipal affairs and sports segments, are anticipated to boost the LED lighting industry. The demand for LED replacements in existing markets requiring renovations, as well as that for high-quality, healthy, comfortable, and smart lighting products, are expected to rise. That being said, as the global supply chain shifts away from China and global production capacity continues to expand, competition is likely to intensify. In addition, more regions are expected to include LED lighting within their protective tariff schemes in 2025-particularly with intensified US tariff policies-which could suppress market demand. Overall, TrendForce estimates the global LED lighting market size to positively return to USD 56.626 billion in 2025.

From the product perspective, TrendForce maintains that increased investments in infrastructure, municipal affairs, sports, and entertainment projects, along with a rising number of electric vehicle charging stations, will create opportunities to reconfigure the outdoor lighting sector. Therefore, outdoor lighting products-including LED street lights, LED floodlights, and LED parking lot lights-are forecast to witness an upward growth trend.

In the mid-to-long term, beyond 2026, the residential and non-residential construction markets-including segments such as healthcare, advanced manufacturing, and infrastructure-are expected to drive significant growth in the LED lighting industry. This growth will be fueled by sustainable development initiatives like decarbonization, increasing consumer demand for healthy and comfortable lighting environments, and the upgrade of LED products to smart control systems. However, caution is advised as emerging protective tariffs worldwide could suppress demand. Consequently, TrendForce remains cautiously optimistic about the future, forecasting the market size to reach USD 63.903 billion by 2029, with a CAGR of 2.7% from 2024 to 2029.

Smart Lighting Market

In 2024, driven by the demand for energy savings, LED lighting products have increasingly incorporated dimming, color tuning, and smart control systems. According to the latest data from TrendForce, the global smart lighting market size grew by 17.6% in 2024.

Broken down by application, the growth was primarily driven by lower costs of smart lighting products and steadily increasing energy-saving demand in the professional lighting market (including commercial, outdoor, and industrial segments) which spurred growth in IoT lighting, particularly in the outdoor and industrial sectors. In 2025, improved consumer demand is expected to stimulate a rebound in smart household lighting, covering products such as bulbs, filament lamps, and ceiling lights. Additionally, spotlights, downlights, and LED strips are gradually penetrating the smart household lighting market, experiencing rapid growth.

Horticultural Lighting Market

According to the latest data from TrendForce, the global LED horticultural lighting market size reached USD 1.315 billion in 2024, reflecting a year-on-year growth of 6.6%. TrendForce's analysis indicates that this recovery is not simply due to downstream restocking; rather, it represents a genuine and sustainable resurgence in demand.

Forecasting for 2025, a new round of cannabis lighting replacements is expected. During the peak period of cannabis applications in 2020-2021, the lighting solutions used featured lower lifespans, luminous efficacy, and light intensity. The anticipated transition to products with higher photosynthetic photon flux (PPF) and photosynthetic photon efficacy (PPE), as well as dimmable multi-channel models, is expected to stimulate further demand. Additionally, ongoing LED penetration to replace traditional high-energy-consuming products, combined with renewed heavy investments in vertical farming across Asia, the Middle East, North America, and Europe-where crop varieties are diversifying towards higher-value produce and research institutions are intensifying their involvement-will inevitably drive rapid growth in the LED horticultural lighting market.

Strategies from Lighting Companies

According to TrendForce, the global lighting market demand remained weak in 2024, especially due to sluggish new installations. Aside from a few companies that have managed to grow revenue through unique operating strategies, most firms experienced varying degrees of decline due to weak revenue. European and the US brands, in particular, suffered from project suspensions or delays, which further deepened their revenue falls; meanwhile, Chinese OEMs faced fierce competition as both shipments and prices dropped. The top 20 lighting companies achieved a combined revenue of USD 24.134 billion in 2024-a 4.7% year-on-year decline that continues a downward trend. Nevertheless, the ranking of the top five remained unchanged, namely Signify, Acuity Brands, Panasonic, LEDVANCE/MLS Lighting, and Zumtobel, reflecting a stable industry structure.

TrendForce further analyzes that the lighting market is mature, highly fragmented, and extremely competitive, making economies of scale particularly important. Additionally, niche lighting segments with relatively high barriers-such as horticultural lighting, marine lighting, and healthcare lighting-are emerging as key areas for future competition and market penetration. For example, the North American leader Acuity Brands is actively entering the gas station lighting market, which it had not previously explored, in an effort to capture additional market share. This indicates that resources will increasingly concentrate on larger companies, leading to a "big gets bigger" trend. Furthermore, digital transformation continues to be a focus for companies, and the integration of LED lighting with smart control systems is expected to be widely adopted, thus unlocking new opportunities for second-round replacement demand growth.