LED lamps for general lighting

[Chris French]

We have a few light fittings with LED GU10's and a one with an R40 spotlight bulb in, and the are fine (though the R40 doesn't really work so well in the fitting it is in as it is a frosted glass shade, but there isn't any back spread of light from it.

We have two light fittings in a hallway, each currently with 3X40W golfball bulbs in (I had the bulbs when I put them up last Autumn, and never got round to replacing them, but a couple are now blown).

My intention was to replace them with some CFL's, but wondering about LED's instead - they spend a lot of time on as are between the two rooms we spend a lot of time in, and in winter can be on quite a lot even in the daytime as not great natural light in there.

The fittings have upward facing frosted glass shades, with the bae of the shade roughtly at the base of the lamp fitting, so the bulbs need to put light out all round to avoid shadow on the shades, wondering how good the general spread of light is from LED lights now, they all still seem to have a plastic base that extends up a fair way into where the glass of a would tungsten bulb would be.

[RJH]

I bought a couple of LED 'pear' bulbs from Aldi a while back, while they were in the cheap bin (£4 each, 350 lumen, 5W IIRC). I think they're good - decent light, instant on and not too white.

[Dave Liquorice]

There are a few about now that only have the opaque plastic up the first 1/3 or so. I *think* I've seen golf balls that have the LED in the base firing straight out into a multifaceted reflector or there are variations on the "corn cob".

Also keep an eye on the wattage/lumens. With LEDs you need around

1/10th the wattage of the incandescant to get similar Lumens. Some of the golf ball lamps are only a watt or so and have rather low lumen outputs.

[GMM]

I'd have thought it was worth a try with one to see how it looks. My cautionary tale from a few weeks ago was the following: We have a

6-lamp light in the dining room (hideous thing but SWMBO can't decide what we should replace it with), previously using 6 x 40W incandescents. It's switched as 2 x 3 lamps for some reason. As the incandescents failed, I replaced half of them with cfl equivalents, which were fine but take a while to come on. No real problem when half were 'real' bulbs. Then I ran out of the originals and decided to replace them all with LEDs. I bought 6 x 5W LEDs (Toolstation) as they allegedly matched the output of the cfls. Now, with all of them on, it's like a bloody floodlight.

Fortunately, we can just turn half on, for the moment, until I find a use for them somewhere else and can justify getting a set of 3W ones.

So the moral is, either check it's going to give you the right light level empirically or buy the dimmable ones.....

[Richard Tobin]

I bought a couple of these recently, from Amazon:

and they're excellent. At least as bright as they claim, with a good spread of light (240 degrees beam angle claimed). They're full size bulbs, but they also have "mini globes" (which I take it is the same as "golfball"):

The beam angle of the bulbs varies from 140 to 240 degrees, so be sure to check...

-- Richard

[Tim Streater]

After 5 years here we are finally getting some wall lights put up, with new cabling and redecoration. So to see how they look, we bought one LED candle blub from B&Q, a 3-watter. Putting it in the dining room cluster which has 4 other incandescent candles, I can't tell the difference except for the plastic you refer to.

[Andy Burns]

+1

I have their 10W/810lm and a 13W/1055lm ones, pretty good "drop-in" replacements for 60W and 100W incandescents, decent spread, warm white, instant on, dimmable, not flickery ...

Don't know if Lidaldi sell golf-ball variety though, if not look at ledhut etc, I have some of theirs in a floor-standing lamp.

[Martin Brown]

I have seen them in one or the other. My first ever LED 240v bulb was on a reduced end of line deal from there in the unpopular ES fitting.

One thing to watch out for is the LED incandescent equivalent ratings are genuine and not artificially inflated like CFL claimed outputs. You can easily end up with a too bright for comfort with some since the 100W equivalent of light is more directional than a normal bulb.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Interesting. The most common pendant type of lighting tends to rely on reflection to illuminate a room. CFL is generally a suitable replacement for tungsten in this way. Obviously if you're replacing directional lighting - like downlighters - LED might be better. But how about for a pendant fitting?

[Andrew Gabriel]

Parents have a 5-lamp pendant in their dining room with frosted glass shades. It originally had 25W clear candles, which I upped to 28W halogen candles when they complained the room was too dark. A few years ago, I started replacing these with the Costco LED candles* in a twin-pack, which were brighter. ISTR they let light out in all directions and are something like 5W (can't recall precisely). The lamps are SES and come with a BC adapter (not needed in my case, and it will lengthen the lamp somewhat). None have ever failed, so I don't know how long they last. They are dimmable in theory, but the load was too small for the dimmer after the last halogen was swapped out, so I changed it to a switch.

*Not on their website for some reason

[Martin Brown]

It is mostly OK. There is a dark circle immediately above the fitting and a slightly higher concentrated patch of light under it, but more than enough light hits the rest of the ceiling to be adequate.

It is more of a problem in a small white room like a bathroom where a LED lamp of nominal 60W can be dazzling compared to a feeble "60W" CFL. (this caught me out when I replaced the bathroom light at my parents)

[DerbyBorn]

The trouble with evaluating LEDs is that the small light souce can appear really bright when you look at it - the real test is the light that is reflected off the surfaces on the room (incident light)

[Tim Watts]

Been very impressed with Philips

The 8W are quite decent and should be the same form factor as a bulb, and the 18W are pretty bright but not harsh like a CFL - they are however rather larger than a bulb...

[Dave Liquorice]

Quite a selction in the basket today in Aldi, Hexham. GU10, Golfballs, candles, reflectors etc various bases (ES SES BC) but only one 2' x 3' tray with em in, all mixed together. Didn't have the higher lumen BC. B-(

[Johny B Good]

That's the older stock being cleared out of the distribution channel (it's not quite 6 times more efficient than incandescent - slightly better than the 4 to 5 times improvement offered by CFL though).

I think it's likely to be another 6 to 12 months before we start to see the more modern LED lamps (10 to 12 times better than incandescents) appearing on the shelves at less than premium prices.

With that in mind, you might as well use up your existing stock of spare CFLs to replace faulty lamps for the next year or so. Obviously, if you've already used up all your CFL spares, you'll be looking at LEDs even if they're the older "Only 6 times more efficient" type simply to get rid of the warm up delay of a CFL.

[Johny B Good]

One way to compare the illumination efficacy between lamp types is to use a camera (even an ancient film SLR will do provided it's got built in metering).

I think even cheap 'n' cheerful P&S digital cameras have a 'manual' mode or will allow you to set the ISO sensitivity to a fixed value and let you you select aperture priority so you can compare the shutter speed reading in each case when pointing at a suitable subject in the room. Provided you can keep the lamp out of the frame, this should provide a very effective comparison.

In answer to Andrew's query regarding LED lamp life, they're usually rated at between 25,000 to 50,000 hours, depending on how close to the thermal limits they've chosen to run the LED(s) at in the lamp.

[Chris French]

In message , Chris French writes

OK, thanks folks for the various comments.

For the situation, with the bulb hidden away in the shade, the corncobs look like they might be a good option, so I might try one of those - and maybe a golfball as well (as I've got somewhere else that can go if I don't like it)

About 4-5W for a 40W halogen equivalent?

[Martin Brown]

Yes. And remember to get warm white if you want to mix and match with existing incandescents in the same room. Cool white is a bit harsh.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

+2

The most recent (last week or fortnight) offering from Aldi has golf-ball variants, iirc.

The Aldidl LEDs have survived unscathed so far, despite being on a lot

- many thousands of hours for the oldest ones. All the cheapy Chinese ones have died.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Here's something that might suit.