LED indoor lighting - knew nothing about until recently

[Alex]

We're catching up on years of backlogged house improvements that we eventually wanted to get around to. One of them is redoing lighting throughout much of the house, going from college-dormesque floorstanding torch lights to various overhead fixtures. This also means rewiring switches all over the house to be linked to the overhead lighting instead of just toggling an outlet. In the kitchen, we really wanted to replace the outdated fluorescent lighting with something a bit more attractive, and reliable. We had changed the ballasts, the switch, the housing, and the tubes a number of times over the years, and there was something about that location that always left it a bit flaky. One way is to replace them all with CFL's, but an increasingly common replacement is now these LED lights that our electrician recommended. Not terribly expensive, easy to install, and they look great. I was worried that the light would look too electronic, or too cold, but the color temp and brightness is just about perfect. They are also dimmable just like an incandescent, which is rare and/or expensive for CFL installs. We went with 9 of the recessed LED lights to illuminate the entire kitchen area. The power usage is minute; at full power they are drawing 11 watts, and provide the brightness equivalent to a 65-watt incandescent. So with all of them at full blast, that's still less than 100 watts continuous, for the lighting traditionally provided by almost 6 100-watt bulbs. California code has some requirements for energy-saving lights in kitchens, but fluorescent, CFL's, and now LED's can all meet that need.

There are also LED bulb replacements for some traditional outlets, like in chandeliers or other light fixtures. Those bulbs can be surprisingly expensive ($40 - $50 and up), but with 30,000 to 50,000 hour lifetimes, they are likely to outlast the current owner of wherever they are installed.

Here's a video of a pretty typical LED can replacement:

Link to original page on YouTube.

[Jiggles]

LED's are awesome. I was watching a mythbusters episode comparing incandescent, cfl and led's to see which was the cheapest based on turning them off and on, life expectancy and running wattage. The LED won on everything and they were unable to "make" the LED's burn out. They burned out the cfl and incandescents by having them turn on and off every 2 minutes, but something like a few months later on the automated on/off program the LED's were still going.

[CThunder-blue]

So are the LED's just plain white? I've found that white LED's are really harsh on my eyes. I don't like the sterile look.

[Bigballsofpaint]

I have the LED lights you can buy at lowes that screw into a standard sockets. They are all in recessed lighting fixtures though. They put out some major light, and CT Thunder Blue, they have bright white and a more yellowish natural light bulb as well. I have the brights in the kitchen and living room, the natural in the bedroom. They are pricey though like you said alex, 30-50 per bulb, when rebuilding my house and buying all new bulbs it definitely cost a nice little chunk.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by CThunder-blue

So are the LED's just plain white?

You can get them in many different color temps, from 2700K on up. 2700K - 3000K is the range of color temp that looks very similar to a standard incandescent bulb. They are offered with higher color temps for a brighter / bluish light for use cases where that makes sense.

[lgk]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

LED's are awesome. I was watching a mythbusters episode comparing incandescent, cfl and led's to see which was the cheapest based on turning them off and on, life expectancy and running wattage. The LED won on everything and they were unable to "make" the LED's burn out. They burned out the cfl and incandescents by having them turn on and off every 2 minutes, but something like a few months later on the automated on/off program the LED's were still going.

a lot of them are guaranteed for 15years of on and off usage. no other technology can come close to making that offer.

another plus is they are instant on, unlike most other energy efficient bulbs.

if they are anything like flashlights the LED uses about 1/10 the power of incandescent lights.

[Apex]

I told my wife that my next mod is LED lighting in the high usage areas. Kitchen, living room and bathroom. She likes to leave lights on, toggle them on and off quite frequently, and leave some on all night. That should save some $$ in the long run. Right now we have incandescent bulbs all over. My plan is to change them out in the next month or two.

[Domagoj]

Most bulbs have expected work hours and number of on/offs written somewhere on the package. Allows you to get a much better estimate, because numbers of on/offs for a... lets say bedroom lighting and bathroom lighting is significantly different.

I don't know about the States, but here one can buy about 5 equally rated cfls for the price of one led. Once the price drops to 2 per one led, they will become really attractive.

[choneofakind]

I love LED's for inside lighting! I replaced my halogen desk lamp with an LED board about 2 years ago. It gets used every day and hasn't burnt out yet. It makes a nice yellowish-white light that is identical to what the halogen bulb made.

[Apex]

I put an LED flood light over the sink at home a couple of days ago. HELLLOOOO...that thing is white. I mean WHITE.

I kind of like a little yellow to it...but it does make the night help feel a bit more like day. So far, I like it. It does not flood the room with light like the old incandescent; it's pretty close though.

[Alex]

We installed a bunch more lighting today. In the bedrooms we went with a fixture that holds 2 CFL's with the G24 bases. The first bulbs we ordered were physically too large, but I found some at Home Depot today that fit fine. They are 23 watt instead of the 26 watt I wanted, but close enough. The light output is really good, and the color/quality is better than I would have expected from CFL's. With the diffuser in place, it's hard to tell that they aren't standard incandescents, as the color is that close to "normal". The 23 watt CFL's claim to be equivalent light output to 100w incandescent, and to my eyes they are not far off. The problem with the CFL's is that they do take a bit of time to warm up, so the room looks quite dim when they are first powered on. They quickly get brighter, but it still probably takes 60-90 seconds before they reach full brightness. But after we thought about it, that is pretty much what you'd want in a bedroom anyway. Easier on the eyes when waking up in the morning, and not too bright when heading in at night from a dark house either.

We also installed new fixtures in our main hallway, and for these we chose ones that run the T4-G9 base, the tiny halogens. These are rated at 40w, and take a single bulb each. We're actually a bit disappointed with these lights, as the light output isn't as bright as we expected or wanted. The hallway is noticeable dimmer than it was with a standard 75 watt incandescent, so it feels like we took a step backwards. I found online that they do make 60w and even 75w bulbs for a T4-G9 base, but after feeling how hot the unit got with a 40w, I don't want to put one higher than recommended into that fixture (which states 40w max that it's rated for).

So - I looked online for quite awhile, and found that there are LED bulbs for the T4-G9 base. Almost all of them are meant for accent or supplementary lighting, so they would likely be even dimmer than these halogens. The 40w halogen are rated at around 400 lumens, depending on the bulbs. The 60w halogen are rated at 780 lumens, so that's what I was looking to get close to if possible. After a whole bunch of googling, I found these. They are rated at 700-750 lumens, so it should be close. The dimensions of the bulb are going to be a tight squeeze in the fixtures, but we think it should just fit. If this doesn't work, my wife wants to just put 2 or 3 more LED can lights in the hallway, identical to what we like so much in the kitchen. I'd prefer to have a fixture that comes out from the ceiling a bit in the hallway, as the can lights are closer to spotlights.

[CynicalC]

LED technology is moving absurdly fast right now. That combined with the state of battery technology is leading to some really useful stuff. We've replaced all our old halogen work lights at work with these.



I'm in the housing market now and with all the lists I've been making of wants & needs, LED interior lighting hadn't even occurred to me. It'd up there on the list now!

[Snake]

In my inspection line of work we used to use the heavy rechargeable MagLights. We have now gone to the much lighter and smaller rechargeable L.E.D. Flashlights.

[Apex]

I saw an LED drop light for working on cars at the store recently. It is on my want list. However, I will wait until my current one kicks the bucket. I hope to have my garage done this summer. Shelving mounted to the ceiling, bike mounts, organized and cleaned up. That is the goal. I want to be able to park two cars in it once again. I just need to work with my wife on how to park where there is enough room for two cars. She tends to hug the center of the garage, no matter which side she parks on. I'm sure I can do something to help that.

[Alex]

All electrical work has been completed, and we're happy how things turned out. It took us some time to find CFL bulb colors we liked for various rooms, but it's all sorted at this point. Across the board the wattage needed is a small fraction of where we were, but the ultimate cost benefit is unknown until we figure out how long each of these lights lasts. It takes < 40 watts (3 by 13 watts) to light up the living room to a very comfortable level while watching TV now, down from 200 - 300 watts depending on how many lamps we used. The LED's worked great to brighten up the main hallway, going from 150 watts of incandescent down to a total of 44 (4 by 11 watts). Each of those units does have a 3-year warranty on them, so if they do flake out on the early side, there shouldn't be any financial penalty.

Will update here if anything interesting happens over the next few years, but I hope that I won't be hemming and hawing again about interior lighting for a very long time.