Burn Out on Light Bulbs

[roger wiegand]

Hated CFLs with a passion. Hated the light, hated the performance, and really hated the fact that they had only half the average lifetime of an incandescent, despite promises that they would live long and prosper. Bought a stock of incandescents in fear that this was going to be the future.

Tried some LEDs early on and pretty much hated the light quality, however that seemed to change about two years ago, with light quality improving and cost falling. The ones we're getting now work well, have good to excellent light quality, and have had a noticeable impact on the electric bill. I've put in various bulbs from CREE, Feit, Samsung, and Phillips depending on the application, all with CRI>90. Pretty much all the bulbs in the house have been replaced now. None have failed yet. The can lights that used to go on and off because of overheating now burn uninterrupted, my overloaded lighting circuit in our main living space is now comfortably within its capacity, and the breaker no longer trips.

So I'm now a happy convert with a bunch of incandescent bulbs to unload.

[Joe Tilson]

Last year Duke Energy had a special on CFL's and LED's, somewhere in the range on 1/3 the cost at stores. We bought six about a year ago. They are still working, and by the way one can reorder as well, for now. I put an LED beside a CFL on a track light in the shop. The LED is brighter especially in colder weather.

[Todd Willhoit]

I've put in various bulbs from CREE, Feit, Samsung, and Phillips depending on the application, all with CRI>90.

Would you mind sharing what specific bulbs you are using? I would like to find "natural", white light rather than blue or yellow.

[roger wiegand]

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Here are some of one's I currently use. The Samsung and Sylvania bulbs are particularly good (CRI 0f 94 and 95), but special purpose -- the Samsung is a short neck PAR30 and were very expensive-- but the incandescent version of the same bulb is over $10. Both the Samsung and Sylvania bulbs are used to illuminate art. For a while I had a halogen on one side of the painting and the LED on the other and I couldn't see a difference. The CREE is my go-to regular light bulb. The Feit candelabra base are one of the few available dimmable in that format-- we have three fixtures with a total of 25 bulbs in our main living space so converting them from 40 w lamps was a big deal.

These are all 2700K bulbs, which you may find a little yellow (I think they are very close to incandescent), but all are, I believe, available in 3000K versions, which will be a little bluer--but nothing like the real blue 5K "daylight" lamps,

[ryan paulsen]

Thank you guys for this timely post. My wife and I are ready to purchase bulbs for our new house, and this has been extremely helpful.

[Pat Barry]

I was never able to get used to CFLs for the same reasons that Steve mentions. The Cree LED bulbs are a different matter. Almost every incandescent bulb in my home has been replaced by a Cree 60W LED, and they are working very well. The color is accurate. They were on sale for $4.97 each at Home Depot, so I stocked up. By the way, you have to check Home Depot locations for the sale price. Not every store has the same pricing on these bulbs.

One interesting characteristic of LED bulbs is that they turn on so quickly that you can actually see the switch bounce from the light switch. A switch that bounces a lot should probably be replaced for good measure.

Switch bounce?? What I see is that the LED bulb takes a bit of time to turn on as compared to an incandescent bulb. It takes a bit of getting used to the very short delay between flipping the switch and seeing the light.