LED Bulbs

We are about to replace our conservatory - reasons can be supplied by contacting Mrs. Sam- but this will actually be a "sun room" (ironic as it gets no direct sun except two weeks in July)- with a heavily insulated ceiling, rather than the old style slab of 20mm polycarbonate. I do like bright lights, but even I wouldn't put 8 50 w halogen spots into the level of insulation planned, as there would be nowhere for the heat to go and I'd expect shortened bulb life and a real fire risk.

Anyway, building regs specify 75% of all fixed lighting must be low power. There will be 8 fixed downlighters.

I planned to use all LEDs and until this week I was considering the SE50 s - but if the actual life of these bulbs is less than I'd expect from a 60w tungsten bulb, a rethink is in order. At £120 a year for bulbs, I could stick 800w of tungsten bulbs in and save money.The electrician is coming on Wednesday and discussions will be had.
 
I'm in the process of switching from 50W halogen to LED GU10 bulbs as the old ones burn out. I'm not in a position to comment on their longevity (and won't be for years) but the amount and quality of light I'm getting from LUMiLiFe 4 Watt (320 lumen) bulbs is impressive. The bulbs were £6 each.
 
Okay, I can now report that I am happy with the 2 GE LED bulbs I bought. I also cannot comment yet on longevity, as I have only had them about 2 weeks. But as far as how they work and the light they provide, I have no complaints.

They were $10 each, so the only complaint I can now have will be if they quit early.
 
I replaced nearly every bulb in my house with LED almost two years ago. Unfortunately, it was a little early in the LED years at that point, and some of the bulbs I tried did not do so well within enclosed spaces like a light fixture. I had 4 of them fail, all from the same manufacturer. I have since replaced them with some of the very highly rated bulbs by Philips, and have had no problems since.

I even replaced the flourescent lights in my kitchen with some LED ones, bypassing the ballast in a manner that is probably not legal according to building codes here. But whatever....

Overall I've been very happy (after I learned my lesson about cheaper LED bulbs in small places where they get too hot). Electric bill was noticibly cheaper and the lights just look SO much better to me than incadescent bulbs did. Granted, I'm partially colorblind like most males are, so your tastes may differ. :)
 
I've had a pair of the Phillips bulbs in my garage door opener ever since they came down to $20 each. The vibration tended to kill incandescents and fluorescents pretty quickly.
 
I guess there's another LED light thread around, because I don't seem to have posted on this one.

Anyway, for those in the US, you should know that Home Depot has been pushing LED bulbs and has a couple of different varieties of 45 and 60 watt equivalent bulbs for about $5 apiece. I've bought a few, and so far they seem to be working very well. They don't need warming up as CFL's do, and they give good light from very low wattage. The 65 equivalents run between 9 and 11 watts.

The ones on sale are "cool white," the full spectrum still being more expensive. I'm not that fussy about color temperature in most of the places these end up. They are selling "Creed" brand bulbs that look pretty much like a standard incandescent, and give fairly even light, and also Philips with a bit more reflector at the base, which seem to work very well in lamps and canister fixtures.

If you're dimming, you may need to experiment with dimmers to find one that doesn't flicker. I actually had to return a fancy new one that was supposed to be correct for LED's because although it dimmed nicely, it flickered when full-on.

I'm still using CFL's for a lot of lights, because they stay on a long time and they're very cheap, but the LED's are gaining, especially for any application that needs to come on quickly, gets switched often, or that is cold.

Longevity is of course still to be seen, but in a couple of the fixtures I'm using, other bulbs have had very short life. In our kitchen we have a track light with four canisters, which gets turned on and off very often. Regular bulbs burn out and overheat. Reflector style incandescents still blow in these fixtures quite often, such that if the Philips LED bulbs last reliably for anywhere close to a year, they'll pay for themselves easily. Plus, instead of 200 total watts, we're using about 40.
 
kookbreaker said:
What color LED is closest to Halogen? White, Warm White or something else?
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Warm White (Appox. 2700k) is close to standard incandescent, while Cool White (Approx. 4100K) is close to what fluorescent tubes in supermarkets produce.

Halogen globes are also incandescent, but they burn hotter than standard incandescent globes, so their color temperature is slightly higher, around 3000k to 3200k. This puts them somewhere between Warm White and Cool White.

But Warm White appears to be the closest match.
 
Yesterday , a second bulb failed in the same ceiling fitting.
This seems unlikely to be coincidence. If there is a reason LEDs should not be used in multi-bulb fittings, I'd think we need to know about it. These bulbs are rated for 25000 hours Thats two falures at about 4% of the claimed life. I'm not impressed.
 
I've had LED bulbs in multi-fitting spots all over my house without issue over the past 2 years. The failures I had were with cheaper, older LED bulbs in an enclosed space where they were overheating. When I replaced them with some higher end bulbs, that issue was solved.
 
The Don said:
I'm in the process of switching from 50W halogen to LED GU10 bulbs as the old ones burn out. I'm not in a position to comment on their longevity (and won't be for years) but the amount and quality of light I'm getting from LUMiLiFe 4 Watt (320 lumen) bulbs is impressive. The bulbs were £6 each.
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Hi The Don,

We are planning to do the same as our 50W halogens burn out. If you have started this process does the light look the same or do the LED's give a noticeably different "colour" light? This will matter to us as our fixtures are decorative pendents. If the colour is different we will likely replace all at once for consistency

Your price seems about the same as here. The LED GU10's are $9 to $10 Canadian.

ETA - It looks like Brian-M has mostly answered my question, but I am still interested in your experience. What colour LED have you used and how do they look?
 
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Soapy Sam said:
Yesterday , a second bulb failed in the same ceiling fitting.
This seems unlikely to be coincidence. If there is a reason LEDs should not be used in multi-bulb fittings, I'd think we need to know about it. These bulbs are rated for 25000 hours Thats two falures at about 4% of the claimed life. I'm not impressed.
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Surely it is the electronics rather than the LEDs that are failing. I assume they are multi-LED bulbs, so if LEDs were failing a whole bulb would not fail at once. I suspect that in specifying lifetime they are only considering LED life and pairing that with cheap DC conversion that is not well tested.
 
Steve said:
Hi The Don,

We are planning to do the same as our 50W halogens burn out. If you have started this process does the light look the same or do the LED's give a noticeably different "colour" light? This will matter to us as our fixtures are decorative pendents. If the colour is different we will likely replace all at once for consistency

Your price seems about the same as here. The LED GU10's are $9 to $10 Canadian.

ETA - It looks like Brian-M has mostly answered my question, but I am still interested in your experience. What colour LED have you used and how do they look?
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I haven't tried warm white yet, but I recently replaced neutral white fluorescents with neutral white LEDs and the color is pretty much the same.

Cool white LEDs are the most efficient. The warmer you go, the less efficiency you get.
 
Steve said:
Hi The Don,

We are planning to do the same as our 50W halogens burn out. If you have started this process does the light look the same or do the LED's give a noticeably different "colour" light? This will matter to us as our fixtures are decorative pendents. If the colour is different we will likely replace all at once for consistency

Your price seems about the same as here. The LED GU10's are $9 to $10 Canadian.

ETA - It looks like Brian-M has mostly answered my question, but I am still interested in your experience. What colour LED have you used and how do they look?
Click to expand...

We have Cool White which gives a clean blue light that I like.

To more closely match the halogens it would be Warm White.
 
I've just recently started trying out LED bulbs. The main thing I've noticed so far is that any talk about colour and equivalent wattage is utter bollocks. While in theory they're supposed to be standardised measurements, no companies even come close to agreeing on what they actually mean, and even different models within the same company can look very different. The only thing that seems at all consistent is that you get what you pay for. A cheap "35W equivalent" will be much dimmer than a more expensive branded one.

Soapy Sam said:
Yesterday , a second bulb failed in the same ceiling fitting.
This seems unlikely to be coincidence. If there is a reason LEDs should not be used in multi-bulb fittings, I'd think we need to know about it. These bulbs are rated for 25000 hours Thats two falures at about 4% of the claimed life. I'm not impressed.
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It's more likely that the problem is with your light fitting, not the bulbs. LEDs are a lot more sensitive to power supply problems than incandescents, since they have more than just a resistor in them, so just because you didn't notice a problem before doesn't mean there wasn't one.
 
Replaced bathroom multi-point GU 10 halogen's with warm white LEDs, the bulbs are brighter but seem pretty much the same colour temperature. When I was fitting them I played around a bit and tried one LED + 2 halogens and couldn't tell any difference in the colour of the light, just the intensity.

Replaced the four halogens in the kitchen fitting and choose cool white for those and that is much more like a fluorescent light colour but doesn't seem as harsh or "flickery" as a standard fluorescent.
 
Modified said:
I haven't tried warm white yet, but I recently replaced neutral white fluorescents with neutral white LEDs and the color is pretty much the same.

Cool white LEDs are the most efficient. The warmer you go, the less efficiency you get.
Click to expand...

The Don said:
We have Cool White which gives a clean blue light that I like.

To more closely match the halogens it would be Warm White.
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Darat said:
Replaced bathroom multi-point GU 10 halogen's with warm white LEDs, the bulbs are brighter but seem pretty much the same colour temperature. When I was fitting them I played around a bit and tried one LED + 2 halogens and couldn't tell any difference in the colour of the light, just the intensity.

Replaced the four halogens in the kitchen fitting and choose cool white for those and that is much more like a fluorescent light colour but doesn't seem as harsh or "flickery" as a standard fluorescent.
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Useful info. Thanks so much. Looks like we will be going with warm white LED's as the wife is quite taken with the appearance and colour of the halogen's light.
 
Darat said:
Replaced the four halogens in the kitchen fitting and choose cool white for those and that is much more like a fluorescent light colour but doesn't seem as harsh or "flickery" as a standard fluorescent.
Click to expand...

Fluorescents do come in different colors. Here is a warm white vs cool white in my kitchen.



Electronic ballast that doubles the AC frequency will also get rid of the (perceptible) flickering, and any buzzing noise.
 
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