High quality efficient home lighting using LEDs, HIRs and Halogens

Yeah nope this is std 70s 8ft ceiling split level house. She just likes pot lights.

 

Yep. It worked out in my kitchen because it has a high ceiling and a giant center island where we do most of our work, so the light is both diffuse enough and is also task lighting. There is some under cabinet lighting as well which again is both diffuse (it's indirect) and task lighting.

 

Biggest misconception is that LEDs somehow last forever. In theory yes, but in practice likely not. This thread was posted about 2 months ago, and already have a major name brand GE LED bulb failure.

 

Could that have anything to do with all LED's claiming "will last 100,000 years" on the boxes?


I have had a few go out, but I do find them more reliable than the old incandescents.

 

@LivinLoud
Be sure to do some research before changing those garage lights out.

 

Thank you! I read the kelvin spectrum part, I’ll revisit this for sure

 

GE quality control is not what it used to be. No surprise really at that price point.

 

I mostly have Cree brand bulbs, as they were the first decent ones available to me here. I've experienced about a 5% / year failure rate.

One thing that definitely kills them faster is using a dimmer. This at first seems counterintuitive but that's incandescent thinking. Most LED bulbs dim by flickering really fast (it's a Pulse Width Modulation algorithm) which is hard work for the emitters and the circuit boards.

 

I’ve only recently seen genuine Cree brand residential products hit the shelves. But the ones I’ve seen have the traditional LED bases, which do not provide the 360 degree light like the GEs.

The bulb that failed was a mini-base E12 bulb. It was in the main floor bathroom so it gets the highest frequency short cycle use in the house.

 

Yeah Crees are old fashioned now.

I had two Cree bulbs fail in the last couple weeks. Both were about 5 years old, 100W equivalent A19 bulbs, in very busy spots with a lot of cycling and dimming.

 

5 years is pretty old in this tech. The latest bulbs are far better in light quality and color while also being more affordable.

 

Found this thread only yesterday, and just finished my third complete read through.

A real gem. Data with no BS.

Thanks............. Frank

 

Had another GE Relax E12 bulb fail today. 3 months and 2 E12 LED failures. Annoyed. The GE E12 design was an older style directionalized light, and Cree has since come out with omni-directional E12 HD lights, so I decided to give those a try instead.



The Cree’s color quality wasn’t quite as good as the GE (92 CRI vs 94 CRI)



I think I like the color of the GE units a touch better, but I like the omni-directional light design of the Crees. Switched out the remaining GEs because my OCDness could not handle mismatched lights. The Crees say guaranteed for 10 years.

The switch just broke too, so not sure if there was maybe a short which might have adversely affected the GE lights. Back to Home Depot.

 

Not that it really matters, but interestingly:

GE: 6.5w 500 lumens
Cree: 5.3w 515 lumens

The Crees consume ~19% less power while producing 3% more output.

 

That's pretty funny. I just bought a 6 pack of new GE Relax E12s today for one of my less used fixtures because it seemed kind of dim and I discovered that it was still all CF bulbs and two had failed. I like the color but they don't subjectively seem as bright as they should be.

Note that these are 5.5W, so slightly more efficient than your old GE bulbs but still not as much so as the Crees you just bought.

I find it interesting that these are labeled as "60W replacement" bulbs rather than 60W equivalent, with fine print saying they are "nearly" as bright as 60W incandescents...

 

That is a newer generation GE E12 than I was running and do look very similar to the new Crees.

Nice 500 vs 540 lumens in fine print. The Crees were a tad higher at 515 lumens, but still under the incandescent 540 lumens. You see the same thing with HIRs, they are just a hair less than the halogen equivalent, favoring efficiency over output.

 

@crashnburn80 the king of lighting again. Awesome thread

 

This thread may as well be gospel. When I bought my house we replaced nearly every bulb or fixture with low budget LED systems from home depot. In short order the number of migraines I had tripled from 3-4 a year to one a month and I got to the point that just watching TV or being on the computer was painful. Then one day the shipyard I work at started replacing the fluorescent tube shipboard temporary lighting with LED units that didn't even have a diffusion cover, just 104 super nova like pinpricks of light in each fixture. I was having a migraine a week and finally put 2 and 2 together. My doctor said I probably have blue light sensitivity, suggested getting rid of all the LED's I can at home, and suggested getting a pair of FL-41 coated safety glasses to use at work and another pair of normal FL-41 glasses to use at home. Truth be told the glasses work ok enough that I haven't had a migraine 8 months and let figuring out what to do with the home lighting get put on the back burner. This thread was the kick in the arse I needed to start replacing the crappy home lighting with something that is not as painful. THANK YOU!!!

 

Glad you found it helpful! Yes the cheapo LEDs are pretty bad. I've still got all the waveform bulbs if you wanted to try them. I would recommend the GE bulbs in the thread for the best and most natural light but the waveform bulbs are 2500k and have the lowest amount of blue light. I can send them to you for the cost of shipping if interested.

 

Thank you but I am good. Replaced all the ceiling fan and vanity mirror bulbs yesterday as a test and it has made a huge difference. I am going to end up replacing all the domed LED fixtures I put in with bulb fixtures.