Switching over light bulbs: Where are you on the continuum?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m one of “those people” you’ve seen at the Home Depot. Pushing around a car laden high with boxes of traditional incandescent bulbs. ( Let’s call them IB’s for this thread ). I detest Compact Fluorescent (CFL) bulbs with a passion on several grounds, just as I deplore the rise of Light-Emitting Diode ( LED ) bulbs.

Here’s a good overview of some of the myths and facts and objections raised in the last few years regarding CFLs and LEDs.

Aside from some of the chemical exposure and radiation exposure issues which are admittedly mighty small, I’ve been hoarding IBs for a few years for one simple reason: they are what I am used to. As much as some new style lights are touted as brain therapy, I basically know in my soul that what my brain and eyeballs crave is a single point source that contains the full spectrum of visible and invisible light. Now, clearly the Sun is the winner here. IBs are not. But at almost 52, my brain has been trained well to accept the color shift of standard IBs as the normal indoor light. The launch of GE’s Reveal IBs revealed (heh ) what a scam “daylight color balanced” bulbs can be. It does turn out that regular old IBs have a [of nearly 100. Bulbs like the Reveal have a 70.

[Note: Now’s a good time to address a nitpick: What you screw into a light fixture socket is not a bulb. In the industry they are referred to as ‘lamps’. However, most people consider a lamp to be the thing you put a bulb into, and I’m happy to go with that incorrect but very widely accepted nomenclature. /note]

My EYES detest LEDs. Here is why. Aside from some [url=“LED Lights May Damage Eyes | LEDs | Live Science”]science into how much LEDs can damage the retina](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_indexColor Rendering Index, or CRI[/url), I hate how they look when I see them. And, I hate how things around me look when illuminated by CFs, and LEDs to a lesser extent. The CFs are so harsh and off-color that they fill my apartment with a glare that’s hard to live in. Early LED lights that were available were made in the shape of a IB for ergonomic reasons: there are billions of lamps and light sockets and recessed lighting areas that are made to accept the contours of an IB. Logically, one emulates what the market is expecting. But the LED I bought happily a year ago ( because they were visually a huge step up from the dreaded CFs ) provided a terribly brilliant point of light using a ultra-bright single LED source. Nothing like Sunlight, which as an animal on this planet I am hardwired to prefer. They then wrapped that single point in a frosted rubbery plastic housing. This did diffuse it somewhat, but I still had to use it in areas where the LED was housed completely so that the bright point was not disturbing or irritating to my eyes.

Yesterday at the Home Despot, I came upon a newer LED offering. Last year’s was 19.95. I can afford to try a few of these, and did. Now they're 9.95. I picked up four of the Philips SlimStyle LED bulbs. 10.5 watt replaces 60 watt. Lasts 25,000 hours so it says. The bulb itself is shaped like a standard IB but is not round, it is that contour but is flat. There seems to be a string of LEDs around the edge. It is hard frosted plastic. I chose Soft White, which to my (fairly tutored) eye appears to be a bit redder and a bit less yellow than standard glass IBs. Not awful- not RED red, but in the spectrum, a bit redder.

I cannot look at the thing. I just turned the one on the desk so I could see the bulb for a split-second and as I blink, I have a perfect pattern of the LEDs on my retina. This will be there for a while. Not nice. So, now I have a color I like, a reduced energy use/value I like, but a retinal hit I decry. Since I cannot remember the last time I used ANY bulb just out in the open, having to aim it up towards the ceiling ( as is the case with this little desk lamp ) or bang it through an opaqued decorative lamp shade or cover, I may have found a workable solution.

The small room I’m in looks more gently lit than it did when using two CFs in the ceiling fixture. ( with the same dish-shaped glass opaque cover found in every single NYC apartment :smiley: ).

I’m not zany in love with this new LED but I am resigned to its existence near my brain and eyeballs. CFs can go suck eggs, and I’m glad I have relatively few of them. I’ve dropped them once or twice and despite the science in the linked article, it felt as though I’d just spilled a few pints of heavy water in the kitchen.

I’m not such a luddite that I don’t care about the energy savings. I do. I do wonder if I will suddenly be drawing in lungfuls of cleansed pollutant-free air because my neighbors and I aren’t firing up IBs and instead have gone to LEDs. Will the Con Ed Generating Station here in Long Island City, NY suddenly go silent as a result? Nope.

I’m happy to do my part, but would be happier yet if technology had come along that didn’t make my brain and eyes unhappy in the process.

Where are you on the continuum? How far have you switched over from IBs to CFs to LEDs ?

2

For some reason, the Poll did not launch. Here were the categories. I’ve Reported my own OP so a helpful Mod might be able to start the Polling at the top.

  1. Hoarding incandescent bulbs for the day when CF and LED goes away.
  2. Have some incandescent, some C.F., not LED
  3. Have all CF in my home, LED still too expensive.
  4. Have a mix of incandescent, CF and LED.
  5. Have gone all LED and won’t look back.
3

All mine are CFLs, not merely because of saving energy, but because I always disliked the golden glow, warm light, of incandescents — for a long while I substituted craftsman ‘Daylight’ incandescents ( coated blue ) for personal use, but they were expensive, and too rare now. Unfortunately CFLs don’t come in Daylight types here.
LEDs I don’t mind, but they are still comparatively expensive, around £5 each, compared to CFLs ( which can be had for about £1 for 4 ); still recently there’s been a glut of Garden Solar LEDs very cheap here about £1 each, and I’ve no idea why. Sometimes markets seem more driven by production than demand, just like command economies of yore.

4

Have mostly CF with some LED as I can afford them - shall we call that 3 a.

5

Have all CF in the house, haven’t really thought about a switch to LED yet.

6

As our incandescent bulbs burn out, I replace them with CFLs. IF LEDs were more affordable, I’d buy them.

My MIL is hoarding incandescents. I sure hope we don’t wind up with them when she dies - I had enough left here by the previous owners - including some 200W bulbs.

7

I have about an even split of CFLs and IBs. I really only have IBs in locations where I’ve deemed them necessary*. I’ve used out of the way locations to get rid of some of the older CFLs that need time to warm up.

I’m going to start switching over to LEDs as soon as I can. Every time I’m at Home Depot/Lowes I check the price and Lumens and they’re just about getting there. I pick up a few a while back but they weren’t compatible with the dimmer in my ceiling fan, so that’s one location that’ll stay IB for the foreseeable future. Too bad, those are the lights I use most.

My plan, going forward, is to slowly replace the most used bulbs with LEDs as they burn out. That’s the same way I did it with CFLs. The price on LEDs right now seems to be about the same as CFLs 10-15 years ago. 5-30 per bulb and coming down very fast. Give them a few more years and they’ll probably all be in the 5-10 range.

8

We aren’t hoarding anything, but over the past few years, I’ve replaced many of the IB’s in our home with CFLs, and replacing light bulbs in general has become a much more infrequent event. My wife still prefers IBs, so I keep IBs around for those places where she actually notices the difference, but other than that, we’ve got CFLs almost everywhere now.

We’d always kept a couple of 4-packs of IBs from 40-watt to 100-watt in the hall closet from way before CFLs became common, and we’re going through them very slowly now, since fewer IBs means fewer instances of needing to replace an IB. And the CFLs really do last a lot longer than IBs, so even if I wanted to transition to LEDs as soon as I burn through my CFLs, it would take a hell of a long time to make that conversion.

The only tricky part is what might be called specialty bulbs, like the globe-shaped 40-watt bulbs that are over our bathroom mirrors, or the flame-shaped bulbs that go in the chandelier over our dining table. I got some globe-shaped bulbs with CFLs inside last fall for the bathrooms, and instead of taking the usual <4 seconds to get to >90% of normal brightness like even my older CFLs, these took more like 40 seconds to manage that feat, and since they started off more like 30% of normal brightness, it was a real nuisance. I have mixed IBs in with them out of necessity (each mirror has fixtures for 3 such bulbs above it) so that I’d have a decent amount of light when I flipped the switch: with just the CFLs, I was only getting near-normal light by the time I’d finished taking a piss and was washing my hands. And these were recently-purchased, name-brand bulbs.

So that’s one area where I’ll probably be hoarding IBs until things improve.

9

Every bulb in our home is CFL. The garage door opener lights are rough duty incandescents, though. Our barn lights require an extension ladder to change. One is burned out, but I’ve avoided replacing it until a few more go. We use 100 watt incandescents (along with heat tape) to keep our barn water flowing in the winter. I have dozens of bulbs stockpiled for that purpose.

10

I am mostly CFL, except the candelabra-base bulbs in the kitchen chandelier, as well as the vanity bulbs in the bathroom.

11

Mostly CFL, some halogen in the potlights that NOTHING else fits into and LED’s in all the outside fixtures.

Moving in panics 3 weeks and the builder has put all CFL’s in the new house. I will be replacing with LED’s as we replace light fixtures (god the basic ones are butt ugly). Undercabinet lighting in the kitchen is all LED.

We’ve also bought a few of these during their kickstarter promotion and they’re headed for the photo studio in the basement and my office.

12

I’ve been 100% CFL since 2002. (about as early as incandescent replacements were overall cheaper than incandescents, over their lifetime). In the beginning I used to swap out all bulbs in my apartments for CFL, keep the incandescents and switch them back when I left because the CFLs were so pricey. LED are fine but not even close to cost effective yet vs CFL, and I don’t see any real advantage vs CFL except slightly lower power costs, which at this point are too small over an LED’s lifetime to pay the premium they command.

13

Heh. That reminded me I have a hood with a 1000 Watt HPS bulb.:cool:

14

Cartooniverse you have to do the poll at the time you create the OP. We can’t go back and add it in. The only option you have now is starting over.

15

We’re 3a as well. Replaced all IB a while back. No huhu.

16

Mostly CFLs except for a few ICs I’m waiting on to die, some misc LEDs I’ve found on sale, a bank of halogens, and some ICs that will never go CFL until they can figure out how to make them dim-able and not either cost a fortune or die early.

17

All CFL except for one LED and two IB floods on the back porch. I moved in here in '04. I have had to replace exactly one of the CFL bulbs so far. Well, make that two of them- but the other one was a no-name flea market one over the stove that made tomato sauce look brown.

18

indirect reflected lighting and good diffusers can do a lot to make a light be more appealing.

LED have come down in price to reasonable. get major brands except where unique (e.g. RSC, Recessed single contact).

i use IC, LED, xmas and rope lights for short duration like room navigation.

i use FL, CFL and LED for long duration room lighting.

19

I bought a CFL bulb that was rated as light equivalent to 100W incandescent. When I actually compared it to a 100W incandescent, it wasn’t close. I held a piece of paper that I placed an oil spot and found where the spot disappeared. It was about 2/7 of the way from the CF to the incandescent. Not even close. There is also the fact that they have to be discarded as hazardous waste. I am holding out for LED bulbs. Yes, they are expensive, but they will outlive me. Main objection: I will have to replace the unventilated ceiling light fixtures. But then I suspect that is why the kitchen light burns out so frequently.

20

Because the lamps heat the room, there is no energy saving to “efficient” lighting at the time you use 1:1 electric heating (such as radiator or fan heater.)

Because the lamps heat the room incandescent bulbs are better at for CO2 emissions than using fuels (burnt at your home or office.) for heating… (Any sort of electric heating is efficient when compared to wood, gas or oil heaters.)
But the electricity people reckon that few people use electric heaters, most use reverse cycle heating or gas or oil heaters…

And here, we hardly ever run a heater, so we do get a saving most of the year.

And the wattage rating for CFL is accurate, the LED’s are problematic due to lower light density from them and the poor (dodgy) ratings of downlights…

The issues with comparisons can be because you are comparing lamps that will not need a diffuser or downward reflector to lamps that need a diffuser… as in … leds need a diffuser, incandescents really should, flouro… well its got the inbuilt diffuser… you can still use an extra one.

One way to brighten the room is to use a better reflector, and paint the ceilings and walls bright white…