I am having the house rewired. In several places (kitchen, bathroom) I am t hinking of having inadequate pendant (?) or fluorescent tube lighting repla ced by low power LED bulbs, flush with the ceiling. Now, LED bulbs I saw in the past looked ghastly, like car head lights, lots of tiny spots of light . The electrician says he will bring some samples. I get the impression the current LED lights have a frosted cover to diffuse the LED light and the f ixing is the same "bayonet" fixing as the GU10 bulbs. Are there any drawbac k to these LED bulbs? They are promoted as the solution to the energy crisi s and all other of society's ills, so I wonder how long before they become yesterday's despised fad?.
I find LEDs are rather stark compared with tungsten or CFL. We've used GU10 spotlights in two situations: three downlighter spotlights in the bathroom ceiling; and six attached to a ceiling bar, pointing in various directions, in the kitchen.
In both cases, the beam spread of the LED version is much narrower than for the tungsten that they replaced, which leads to more parts of the room in shadow, and shadows which have harder edges.
My wife has asked me to replace the ones in the bathroom with the older tungsten bulbs, partly for the warmer colour of light. We've kept the kitchen ones and I've got used to them now, but to begin with the lighting was less even, despite the bulb holders being in the same positions as before.
CFLs (daylight colour) are great. They provide a nice diffuse light (in large cylindrical "parchment" shades with no top and bottom) and we use them in all the rooms (bedrooms, landing) which have pendant light fittings; in the lounge we have a central three-bulb fitting which takes three candle sized bulbs, and we can't get CFL bulbs that are small enough and yet bright enough (ie 60W tungsten equivalent).
The CFLs are maybe three years old and are just beginning to show slight signs of age: they take a minute or so to reach maximum brightness, but at least their initial brightness is about 80% maximum, unlike early CFLs where some manufacturers' bulbs were dangerously dim for the first few minutes.
My impression is that daylight CFLs provide better colour rendition than daylight LEDs: they are better at rendering dark reds which look rather dull and almost monochromatic under LEDs.
I repaced 4 halogens with 2 x 6 inch panels LED cool white 12 watt, yes they are bright but that is what she wants (shower room ) so she can apply make up etc, she is more than happy. She now wants similar on the kitchen which I will do this year. I wouldnt use them in other rooms though.
We like LEDs but won't change bulbs/strips anywhere until they die. CFLs are awful in lamps, they get very hot. Strips give dreadful colours.LEDs are like daylight. Trouble is, older 'long life' lighting lasts a long time.
Presumably CFLs get a LOT less hot that the tungsten bulb that they replaced. I've got a 25W CFL (150W tungsten equivalent) in my study and it's been on for a couple of hours in a shade that's a vertical cylinder about 30 cm diameter with no top and bottom. And the tube (coiled to make a unit about the size of a tungsten light bulb) is warm but I could easily keep my fingers on it for a minute or so.
So you think that LEDs give better colour rendition than CFLs? I took a few test photos under daylight, daylight CFL and daylight LED (with the camera manually white-balanced to each light source) to see which photo looks most like real life. I'm not sure whether older strip lights (which are usually warm-white, somewhere between the colour of tungsten and sunlight) are worse for good colour rendition.
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(daylight under 100% cloudy sky)
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(daylight CFL bulb)
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(daylight LED - GU10 spotlight)
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("white" fluorescent tube)
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("white" fluorescent tube on camera's cloud setting to show that light is actually tungsten coloured!)
Manual white balance off a piece of white card which filled the frame
My impression is that the reds (the lettering on the Radio Times and the red panel on the packet of screws) is darker on the LED and "white" fluorescent, and a bit more vibrant on the daylight and daylight CFL. Obviously these are just quick tests: I've not tried to ensure that all the pictures are at the same exposure (eg metering off 18% grey card or anything technical like that!). Scuse the camera shake on some of them!
They are pretty much the future now with efficiency/efficacy overtaking HPS and fluoro tubes by a fair margin.
I solved that in my kitchen by using a mixture of Philips LED spotlights which are a bit too directional but near perfect warm white to match existing filament lamps and a couple of warm white LED bulbs.
The current crop of LED spotlights are a bit too directional.
Whilst CFLs are serviceable they have never had decent colour rendering and are invariably slow to reach full brightness and unwilling to start at all in very cold conditions. Couple that with the tendency of their control electronics to cook itself and you have it.
It makes sense to replace them as they fail and in the areas that get the most use - you make the most savings that way. Replacing the one in the loft where you almost never go makes no difference at all.
You want "warm white" LED bulbs if you want to match incandescent lighting - the Philips and Samsung versions are the best I have found. Some others are dreadful.
I agree. I've just put 8 5W GU10 LED spotlights in my kitchen. They seem at least as bright as the 50W ones they replace and they give a more diffuse, less shadowy light which I like.
The problem here is LEDs ain't like daylight. They may approximate to the basic colour temperature of some types of daylight - but have vast chunks of the spectrum missing.
The same can apply to fluorescent but at least if you care you can buy tubes with a decent colour spectrum.
Why is a CFL less likely to have a decent colour spectrum than a larger strip light tube? Don't they both have the same range of phosphors available - just that a CFL is a much smaller version and has an instant-on starter without the flash-flash-on starting of a big tube. Or am I missing something?
They are made down to a price as household etc tungsten replacements.
Tubes are made in a big variety of specs for different applications. The more basic ones may give the highest amount of light per watt - but that may not be the highest quality of light.
Specialist tubes come in all sorts. Growing lights for plants, etc. Ones good for live fish. UV for disco lighting. And just about anything in between.
For not much more cost than the cheapest, you can buy tubes that are a very good match to real daylight, or say halogen. Given their long life, the slightly higher initial cost doesn't much matter, if such things are important to you.
But it's fairly obvious it doesn't much matter to many on here and elsewhere. Saving a penny or two on costs is, though.
If buying from LED hut perhaps wait a few weeks until they have a VAT free weekend or another 20% off offer. You may have to check each day because some of their discount offers only last a few days.
It would be possible to make a CFL with any spectrum you want. But as I said, they are made down to a price and to just replace ordinary GLS tungsten. The sort of small numbers to satisfy a demand for decent light quality would simply cost far too much.
Lets face it. Most replace the say 100w tungsten they had before with a CFL which simply doesn't give as much light, and are happy because it's saving them money. So why would they worry about the quality of light it produces?
I wouldn't say any fluoro gave a particularly decent spectrum. There is always a horrible green cast waiting in the wings from mercury lines.
That said there is a much wider range of special lamps available in the non-CFL format with phosphors eg. to match horticultural requirements (and butchers shops to make meat look better).
A selection of US lamp models with spectra is online at:
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There is quite a wide variation. By comparison true LED sources are more rounded and much less dominated by sharp line emissions.
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