What type are "most" of your bulbs in home lighting? LED, CFL, Incandescent....

[lakelover]

What type are "most" of your bulbs in home lighting? LED, CFL, Incandescent....

I'm thinking about starting to get our home lighting updated to LEDs. Currently we have about about 95% CFLs and 5% incandescent. In my initial shopping around, I've discovered that when you campare advertised specs to the reviews, practically everything is over-rated as far as equivalent brightness ratings are concerned. If you compare lumen and color temp ratings, you should be able to get a rough idea of how it will appear if the specs are truthful.

What I'm hoping mostly to use are non-dimmable, "soft white" (2700K) and roughly 1500-1700 lumens. And will also need a few that are dimmable.

Can anyone recommend brands that they have been satisfied with?

 

[ondarvr]

I just brought home a 6 pack of LEDs today to start converting, checked a few reviews of the box store product and they weren't bad. I'll see how well I like these before buying more.

 

[lakelover]

At the cost they are, you need to proceed gradually if you're replacing everything.

 

[MTboatguy]

I am 100% converted over to LED now and it is making a difference, saving me about $15 a month, keep an eye out for the sales and you can find some really good deals on mulitipacks, it is well worth your time.

 

[bigdee]

I have converted main home 100% and lake house 50% over to LED. I used the Lowes Ulitec brand around $2 each in bulk for 60 w equivalent. Bought some (quite a few) mini-base decorative bulbs at walmart for 2.85 each. Also outdoor Floods about $6. In total about 60-70 bulbs and not a single failure to date. The old CFLs were a joke with short lives....had one catch on fire! By switching to LED I was able to downsize my emergency generator allowing more run time on less fuel.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Kitchen is all LED, garage is 4' florescent. Incandescent everwhere else. Will change the lights in the fans to LET's when we change the fans.

 

[Baylinerchuck]

I have always hated CFL bulbs due to the warm up time in those things. I started hoarding incandescent bulbs after there were talks of our government, US, banning them. Once the LEDs came out I started switching to some of those. There seems to be some studies coming out warning of a certain frequency of blue light in LEDs and how it can be harmful to our eyes due to the larger doses we could be getting. One of the studies mentioned limiting LED lighting when reading, or at night before bed. I'm starting to pay more attention to these findings and balance my lighting more with incandescent bulbs. The warmer light from incandescent is more inclusive of all the spectrum instead of high concentrations of blue. Something to think about anyway........http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/122-A81/

 

[lakelover]

Personally, I prefer the warmer color of the incandescents and hope to get close to that color temp when I settle in to a brand. When I had incandescents only, I used mostly 100w and a few 75w & 60w. In most cases, the brighter the better for me. Most of the CFLs I have now (except for desk lamps etc) are 23w or 26w, and about 1650 lumens. Start up time is very inconsistent, some are slow to brighten, some are instantly bright, some give a flicker then full light. All in all, a lot cheaper to run than incandescents, but very inconsistent quality control. I still have incandescents at front & back entrances because of instant-on.

 

[jbcurt00]

lakelover check your PMs.

 

[lakelover]

lakelover check your PMs.

done, thanks.

 

[MTboatguy]

All of the LED's lights I have are warm, you could walk in my house and swear I am running Incan lights, except for the heat, if you look around at HD and Lowes, they carry quite a different spectrum of colors in LED's these days.

 

[ondarvr]

Yes, I Iooked at each, picked bright white for the kitchen, not the best look, but my wife wanted it to be bright, probably use warm everywhere else.

Warm, Bright and daylight are the options, there's a light box in the store to compare the color of each. For gel coat demonstrations we used to use the same type of light box to compare colors under different types of lighting.

 

[ezmobee]

I jumped on a bandwagon a little too early and replaced all the bulbs in my camper with LED's and they're the really harsh bright kinda blueish white. Wife hates them and I'm much of a fan either. I don't think the warm ones were available at the time at least not cheap. They sure stay nice and cool though.

 

[lakelover]

The operating temp is definitely a plus. Heat from incandescents has caused the paint on the ceiling to crack some above a couple of double-light fixtures we have. One time I bought some cool-white CFLs by mistake and I hated them.

 

[JASinIL2006]

I am SO glad to see CFLs go away... those things are just awful in about every way. We are slowly moving to LEDs as CFLs and incandescent bulbs burn out. We still have a few specialty fixtures that need incans, but most don't. The CFLs that still work (those things never seemed to last as long as promised) are getting relegated to little-used or out-of-the-way fixtures, like parts of the basement. I have not found many places where I like the bright white; the warmer colors definitely look better to me.

 

[lakelover]

The only thing I liked about CFLs was how much they cut my electric bill -- going from mostly all 100w to 23/26w made quite a dlfference.

I just did a count and have 61 to replace. "Eventually". It's a relatively small house, about 1300 sq. ft.

 

[MTboatguy]

I jumped on a bandwagon a little too early and replaced all the bulbs in my camper with LED's and they're the really harsh bright kinda blueish white. Wife hates them and I'm much of a fan either. I don't think the warm ones were available at the time at least not cheap. They sure stay nice and cool though.

I have converted both my 5th wheel and motorhome to LED, but I picked up the warm version, they are impossible to detect over the old incandecents. I picked all of mine up on ebay for a lot less than the RV store wanted for them.

 

[Darrenmb]

I changed all fixture and lamp bulbs in my house (except fluorescents in garage) with led and love it! Power bill is down a little, thats always nice! Heads up though, i dont think led is at its prime yet, still haveing issues with bulbs blowing. Keep your receipts!! Also if you have timers you may run in to issues with led not turning off but glowing dimly instead, this is remedied with newer timers that have all 3 wires versus just the black and ground..

 

[bruceb58]

Every single bulb in my main house and vacation house is 100% LED. That includes replacing 26 fluorescent tubes to LED tubes in my 3 car garage. I used the 400K color for the garage.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NXBMDEY...ing=UTF8&psc=1

I have used many bulb vendors and I have zero failures so far. Most of mine are from Costco.

I don't wait for old incandescents to burn out. I just threw them away along with my entire stock of spares. No sense in running incandescents at all since you get return on your money pretty fast depending on what your power rates are. I figure my return at 2 years tops.

 

[Gyrene]

I love the GE "Bright Stik" LEDs. Look for sales on them. Sam's Club has a 6-pack for $14.28 right now (60W soft white equivalent)
They fit pretty well everywhere.
Home Depot carries them, also.