OT: The Problem With LED's

[DerbyDad03]

The problem is that LED's are being built into all sorts of things these days. That means that you can't always choose your own lumens or color temperature.

You find the perfect ceiling fan with built-in light kit and the light isn't exactly to your liking. Of course, you don't really know that until you've hung the darn thing.

You find that really nice reading lamp for next to the couch and the light's too harsh. Now you have work out a way to dim it.

That bathroom fan/light/heater that you spent hours cramming into the ceiling? LED light that flickers when you dim it. So you install an LED compatible dimmer but the light doesn't dim as much as you like.

I long for the good old days (4, maybe 5 years ago? Sooner?) when you could still buy stuff that had those little round sockets that you could screw your own bulbs into. Now all we can get are those little yellow squares on a circuit board. ;-)

[ads]

I put time and energy in doing research for things with replacebale bulbs and then usually put "warm white" LED bulbs in those fixtures - lots easier on your eyes than the blue-white 7000K "daylight" bulbs.

The light over the mirror in the master bath took a little time to find (right finish and style for her, replaceable bulbs for me). It's a three light fixture and the center bulb is incandescent to get the color temperature of the light to an acceptable range with LED bulbs on either side of it. Not perfect but it's much better than the fixture in the basement bath with all LEDs.

[Clare Snyder]

I have found the opposite. I've switched virtually everything over to the daylight bulbs and after a very short period of adjustment have found it VERY GOOD.I can use 60 watt equivalents in place of 100 watt bulbe and single 4 foot tube replacements give as much visibility as twin tube flourescents with dekux cool white -which is what I generally used.

[Puckdropper]

DerbyDad03 wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Not even on a circuit board... Tape. Depends on how good the tape is, too. I got some cheap stuff (my money, my choice) from banggood and the tape is coming off and causing the lights to fail. I gotta get the soldering iron out and fix that one day--and the double sided tape too.

I love LED fixtures, they're really bright, they sip electricity, but when they die you're out $30+ for a new fixture rather than $0.25 for a new bulb. I guess it just depends on how good of driver the manufacturer put into the fixture as to how long they last.

FWIW, you can paint individual LEDs with translucent paint. Sometimes I need to make a LED more amber for use as a locomotive headlight. I doubt you can take a 2700K LED and make it 6500K, but you can take a 6500K and tone it down.

Puckdropper

[pyotr filipivich]

DerbyDad03 on Wed, 29 Jan 2020 19:40:21 -0800 (PST) typed in rec.woodworking the following:

I'm longing for the days when I could get a lantern/flashlight which didn't blind me with the back scatter. I do like how the LEDs can be used half the night, night after night, for a long camp out. But being blinded by the light is a pain. Literally when you trip over something obscured by the glare.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Same here. Last house was nearly all LED. When we moved in here a year ago the builder had all LED and thankfully, all the daylight. I like the white light. One exception. The lamps on the bedroom end tables have two bulbs. In one I have a 15W with a low color temperature. I have that on when watching TV in bed. They actually make lights to go behind the TV. better on the eyes.

[DerbyDad03]

But you were able to choose what equivalent wattage and what color to use. Even in your 4' tubes you had choices. Not only did you have a choice when you bought the LED bulbs, you had the opportunity to return the bulbs and try something else. I've done that. That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about things like this:

Love the look of the fan, had to accept the light output. No choice other than find a different fan that has different LED specs. I'd basically have to choose the fan based on the light specs since I can't choose my own bulbs to see what works best. It's not like they offer different light kits for any given fan. 17W, 80 CRI, 1600 lumens. Take it or leave it.

At a minimum, fans and other devices that don't have "sockets" should at least have LED's that allow the user to choose their own color temp. I bought LED covers for the can lights in the bathroom where I installed the fan/light/heater unit. The user has 6 choices of color temperature. I couldn't choose the color of the light in the fan/light/heater, but at least I could match the color of all the lights by selecting the color temp of the can covers.

That entire fixture costs $13, so using a switchable LED panel in the $290 ceiling fan I linked to above wouldn't add more than a dollar or two to the cost of the unit and would make it so much more flexible.

[Leon]

You must be shopping in the wrong places. I am having no issues at all with choosing the correct color/temperature/lumens.

[Leon]

You must be shopping in the wrong places. I am having no issues at all with choosing the correct color/temperature/lumens.

[DerbyDad03]

Reread my post. Tell me how I chose the correct color/temperature/lumens in a ceiling fan with a built in light kit or a bathroom fan with a built in light kit? You know, these kinds of light kits which are wired into the fixture?

I'm not talking about replaceable off-the-shelf bulbs.

[Leon]

Well you don't buy something that could look differently, off of Amazon. Buy from a local store so that you can see what you are actually getting.

If you were looking for Barn Red paint on Amazon you would probably get a dozen suggestions with each being different.

Almost every fixture at Home Depot, Lowes, Menards, etc has these type products on display and lit up.

[DerbyDad03]

I think you are still missing my point.

We didn't buy the ceiling fan on Amazon. I was merely showing you type of LEDs I'm talking about. Unreplaceable, built into the fixture. That's the type of LED in my new ceiling fan.

We bought the fan at a fancy-ass lighting store. Sure, it was on display and lit up. Right along with 50+ other fans and hundreds of lighting fixtures.

There's no way you can tell how the light will look in your home under those conditions. Not the light fixture, the light that the fixture casts.

My point is that even if they had a way to completely replicate my lighting conditions in the store so that the light would look exactly as it would at home, I'd still be stuck with that light because that is what comes with the fan I want.

To put it another way, if I buy this, I get the only light kit that comes with the fan I like:

If I buy this, I can chose what bulbs I use - but I don't want this type of light kit.

That's what I mean by "the problem with LEDs". The tail wagging the dog. If I want to chose my own bulbs, I can't buy the fan I want.

[Clare Snyder]

If it bugged me enough "I" would soon have it changed. The LED IS replaceable. I'd soon find a COB unit the right color temperature to graft into it, one way or another if it bugged me enough. I've done a lot more complex than that.

[Clare Snyder]

I've bought some of that s**te too - I'm a relatively fast learner but even I tried a few before I got smart. Paying triple the price is still cheap if youdon't have to fix or repair it.

And sometimes replacing the driver is all that is required. Done that too. You should have seen the strobes, position indicators and landing lights my partner designed for the Pegazair!!!!

[Clare Snyder]

You CAN buy LED flashlights that have a more "natural" beam pattern and enough difusion to kill the glare.- but they don't cost $6 or less.

[Clare Snyder]

You aren't shopping at Home Despot or Lowes or some discount online retailer. (and you are likely not paying MUCH more than the guys who "never pay retail"

[Clare Snyder]

I just gave the answer. Don't buy off Amazon. There ARE suppliers that give you a choice.

[Clare Snyder]

ANd if I go to my local electrical supply I can order a LOT that you will NEVER see at ANY of those places. In some cases I can even custom order something that is not in the catalog by ordering one item and a part from a similar item - like a fan I like and the light from a similar fan that will fit and is the color temp I want. I've even done that at a local lighting store.

[Clare Snyder]

They ARE replaceable. Supposedly not "field replaceable" or "user replaceable" but replacement parts ARE available for the good brands.

Replacement lamps ARE available for Kichlers. And they make fans with different lamp colors. The lamp elements are interchangeable between MANY of their fans.Just need to know exactly what color temp you want, or get the one closest to what you want and match your other lighting to it.

[Clare Snyder]

Back in the incandescent days you were basically stuck with one color too - unless you wanted red or yellow or green or purple.

The flourescent lamps gave you some choice. LED gives you a lot more

- and the high end LEDS can be any colour you want - you can tune them any way and even change them "on the fly" Some in-between units allow you to jumper between 2 or 3 color temperatures