Lessons in LED lighting.

One of the goals I had in my recent house renovation was to change every light bulb in the house to LEDs. I was dividing the house into two apartments and had to pull all the halogen spotlights out of the ceiling that was now a fire separation, and was finishing what was the basement, so new lighting was needed throughout. Most of the house was lit with compact fluorescents, and I never liked them very much.

But the main reason I could do this is the fact that in the last year, the cost of changing to LEDs has dropped like a stone. There is a wide range of bulbs now available for under ten bucks, and if you are willing to spend a bit more there are some very exciting things happening in the LED world.

I started the process with a search for real LED-based fixtures, where the bulb is actually part of the fixture. The idea of putting an LED light and its electronics into a 120 year old Edison base, designed for a time when a bulb lasted a couple of hundred hours, seemed crazy. Surely there must be fixtures designed around the LED instead of just adapting the LED to the conventional lighting fixture.

And indeed there are, but they are few and far between, very expensive or very ugly. I went to a giant lighting supplier and found exactly one, at $500. IKEA, which is now almost all LED, had exactly one, the VIKT wall light, and it is strikingly ugly and useless, pointing light just up and down. Home Depot had exactly one, and it was horrible too. The fancy lighting showrooms have more of them, but they were all out of my price range. I needed a lot of lights.

In the end I concluded that we are in a weird, in between time when the designers and manufacturers have not caught up with the technology, and one has far more options mixing the LEDs with the Edison bases with existing fixture designs. We are just not at the real transition point yet, so I have gone for a transitional solution, buying the cheapest fixture in IKEA (and I mean cheap at $4.99). I must have bought two dozen of them. They will do the job for now.

IKEA is doing a lot of LED education to get people to "think Lumens, not Watts" and is not even publishing the watt equivalent in light output on its packaging anymore. It's not intuitive, and I made a few mistakes. I bought a lot of IKEA 400 lumen bulbs and that's really not a lot of light.

I am much happier with the Philips Slimstyle bulbs that pump out 800 lumens, pretty much equivalent to an incandescent 60 watt bulb. (See Mike's coverage of it here) The difference in electrical consumption is trivial; the 400 lumen bulb uses 6.3 watts, the 800 uses 10.5.

Actually, the Philips bulb is an amazing thing. It looks like a cartoon, like someone stepped on a conventional bulb. It's all plastic, looks and feels light and cheap, but just pumps out those lumens and fits in any fixture. It has become the default bulb around the house and will be around for a while; It has an estimated life of 22.8 years with average use.

For the crystal chandelier that my wife recently inherited, I installed 90 lumen bulbs and it was a mistake; the fixture barely glows. (The wood ceiling doesn't help) I thought that six of them would add up to a reasonable amount of light but they will have to be replaced. Lesson: Go bright.