our first foray into led. picked up a couple of led floods for recessed cans in our master bath with 12' ceilings, replacing two incandescent. very impressed with the results, better light, low energy use, just a little off from the incandescent color. spec: sylvania ultra led. (glass edition?) 75w rating using 13w. indoor/out flood, par 30 wet rated. 22+ years life. 825 lumens, dimmable 5 year warranty, cost: $9.98 at lowes.
Nice! Once you go LED you will never go back. A recent renovation gave us the opportunity to go almost all led and we've really liked it. A little cooler color temp than incandescent and way better than CFLs.
agreed. i'm slow to change, but the lack of incandescent options on the shelf forced me out of my complacency, for the better. part of it is getting a handle on terminology, which i find intimidating.
CFLs were only tolerable because of the enormous energy efficiency improvement, but it was a crying shame to give up instant-on/full-on (as opposed to fading in, though that did improve quite a bit over the years if you were selective), easily dimmable, and low-K warm light ("warm" CFLs tend to have very weird "notches" in their output spectrum). All fixed with LED, and I replaced every CFL in the house once LED hit reasonable prices (i.e., <$4/bulb). Main constraint w/LED for now is that the least expensive bulbs are "non-dimmable", so you have to be careful which bulbs go into what applications. As for color temp, I'd note that "little cooler color temp" (which I assume means higher K, toward blue/daylight) depends entirely on your choice of bulb. I pay a lot of attention to color, especially for lamps I intend to use later into the evening (when blue light is more likely to disrupt sleep cycles), and there are a wide range of colors out there. There are even "vintage edison" LED bulbs with very low-K LED "strips" designed to emulate filaments that produce VERY warm light, almost amber (~2200K). Philips also makes a line of "Warm Glow" bulbs that actually lower color temp when dimmed (2700K at full brightness, 2200K dimmed). My newest desk lamp uses arrays of white and yellow LEDs to provide 20 different combinations of color temp and brightness. (less than $35 at Amazon) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KSQ8ZNA
i went right by the cfl's, after the power company replaced all my incandescents for free, and i had to change them all back because they were so poor. the only color choices i saw at lowes for the 75w par 30 flood, were coolant warm. i'll have to do more on line investigation as i replace other bulbs.
Halogen are usually 3200 degree Kelvin (lower is warmer), while daylight registers around 5600 K (bluer) depending on time of day. I suspect traditional incandescent hover around 2700-3000 K or lower. Did not know that! Would mimic incandescent pretty well in that regard. Also wasn't aware that some CFLs produced notching, which explains the unflattering, pasty light they produce. Will check out the variable K desk lamp you spoke of.
We have LEDs in almost all of our fixtures. It is hard to find good color options. I prefer daylight and won't buy anything lower than 4000k. Once I experienced nice white light I can't go back to dingy yellow. Nexus 5X ?
I even scrapped our old fixtures, replacing them with surface-mount almost-flush LEDs fixtures. They give the rooms a much cleaner look, and were an opportunity to better seal leaks around the old electrical penetrations. For fixture replacements, choices are still limited. For other lamps, we moved up to 3000K from the standard 2700K, but are not yet ready to go to 4000K. I very clearly see the appeal, but am not yet sure what it does to circadian cycle rhythm.
I've had no problems with sleep after switching to LED lights. Our longest days are 16 hours so I just look at it like it is summer time all year. Nexus 7 ?
