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Still use incandescent bulbs? The time has come to flip the switch to another option, namely LED bulbs. Not only are incandescent bulbs high-energy and costly for your monthly energy bills, but they're now going to be very to find in a store. After years of rising standards, new regulations from President Joe Biden's Department of Energy have effectively banned the sale of most incandescent lightbulbs in the US. The rules state that lightbulbs must emit a minimum of 45 lumens per watt — about three times what an incandescent bulb emits. Anything else will no longer be produced, which is essentially a death sentence for all incandescent lights.
If you haven't switched to LED bulbs yet, now is the time and the reasons why are vast and compelling. For starters, LED bulbs last much, much longer than incandescent bulbs, and they put out the same amount of light using significantly less energy. That's great for the environment, and it can save you money on your electricity bill in the long term, especially if you're upgrading a whole home's worth of bulbs.
In fact, the Department of Energy projects that this new policy will save US consumers almost $3 billion on their utility bills, all while cutting global-warming carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons over the next 30 years. And if the cost and environmental benefits aren't enough to sell you, LED bulbs also have many interesting and worthwhile features, including bulbs that change colors, and bulbs that sync with your smart home, home security system or voice assistant of choice.
Buying the right LED is different from buying incandescent bulbs, though. So before you go shopping, there are five things you need to know. For more, read everything to know about the incandescent lightbulb ban and how to save money on lighting.
Forget what you know about incandescents; your watts are no good here.
When shopping for bulbs, you're probably accustomed to looking for watts as an indication of how bright the bulb will be. That's because with incandescents, the wattage is a reliable indicator of how much light the bulb will emit: The greater the bulb's wattage, the greater that tungsten filament inside will glow. The brightness of LEDs, however, is determined a little differently.
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Contrary to common belief, wattage isn't an indication of brightness, but a measurement of how much energy the bulb draws. For incandescents, there is an accepted correlation between the watts drawn and the brightness produced, but for LEDs, watts aren't a great predictor of how bright the bulb will be. That's because LEDs are designed to be as efficient as possible without compromising the quality of the light -- and some LEDs are better at the job than others.
For example, an LED bulb with comparable brightness to a 60-watt incandescent will typically only draw 8 to 12 watts. Imagine you see two LEDs sitting on the shelf at the store, each of them branded as a 60-watt replacement. One draws 8 watts, the other draws 12 watts. It is absolutely possible that the 8-watt bulb will be brighter than the 12-watt bulb, which is why you should essentially ignore the wattage when you're looking for brightness from your LED bulbs.
Fortunately, there's a better way to talk about brightness, and that's the lumen. The lumen (lm) is the real measurement of brightness provided by a lightbulb, and it's the number you should look for when shopping for LEDs. For reference, here's a chart that shows the watt-lumen conversion for incandescents and LEDs.
Watt-lumen conversion for incandescents and LEDs.
As you can see in the chart above, an incandescent can draw up to five times as many watts for the same number of lumens. Get a sense of the brightness (in lumens) you need before heading to the store, and throw away your affinity for watts.
Incandescent bulbs typically put out a warm, yellowish hue, but LEDs come in a range of colors.
As shown off by Philips Hue, LED bulbs are capable of displaying an impressive color range, from purple to red, to a full spectrum of whites and yellows. For the home, however, you're likely looking for something similar to the light that incandescents produce.
The two most popular colors available for LEDs are soft white (also called warm white) and bright white (also called daylight). Not confusing at all, right?
Soft white and warm white will produce a yellow, candle-like glow, close to incandescents, while bulbs labeled as bright white or daylight will produce a whiter light, closer to daylight and similar to what you see in offices and retail stores.
If you want to get technical, the color of light on the white light spectrum is called color temperature, and it's measured on the Kelvin scale. The lower the number, the warmer (yellower) the light. Your typical soft white incandescent is somewhere between 2,700K and 3,500K, so if that's the color you're going for, look for that range while shopping for LED bulbs. Want something daylight toned? Look for bulbs rated at 5,000K or higher.
Not sure which to buy? Read our warm lightbulbs versus cool lightbulbs comparison to help you decide.
LED bulbs are like hybrid cars: More expensive upfront, but cheaper to operate.
It used to be that you could grab an incandescent bulb at the hardware store for a buck or so. Then, LEDs came along -- most of them costing a lot more. Thankfully, several years of development and competition have brought prices down to the point where you'll find plenty of LED options in the lightbulb aisle available for $5 or less.
But the dollars and cents don't stop there. You need to factor in the cost of using the bulb -- and the great thing about LEDs is that using them doesn't cost very much at all. For instance, a traditional 60-watt incandescent lightbulb will add about $7 to your energy bill each year if you use it, on average, for three hours a day. A 60-watt replacement LED that puts out the same amount of light will draw as little as 8 watts, and only add about a buck to your energy bill over that same year-long span.
In other words, even if the LED costs $5 and the incandescent is a freebie that you found rolling around in a drawer somewhere, the LED is still the less expensive option after less than a year of use. In the meantime, you'll enjoy less heat production, longer bulb life and even the option of controlling them with your smartphone. It won't burn out after a year, either.
Because of their circuitry, LEDs aren't always compatible with traditional dimming switches. In some cases, the switch must be replaced. Other times, you'll pay a little more for a compatible LED.
Most of the existing dimmers in homes today were likely designed to work with incandescents. Dimmers like those work by cutting off the amount of electricity sent to the bulb in rapid-fire succession, faster than the eye can detect. LEDs draw a lot less energy, so they don't always work well with dimmers like that. (Here's a handy guide that goes a little deeper into the reasons why.)
The first thing to do if you're buying LEDs that you want to use with a dimmer switch is to make sure that you buy bulbs that are, in fact, dimmable. Most manufacturers offer nondimmable LED bulbs with no onboard dimming hardware whatsoever, and while those are fine if you want to save a buck or two on a bulb intended for a nondimmable fixture, they're the last thing you want if you like the lights dimmed down low.
My second recommendation? Start with a single bulb from a major manufacturer and hang onto the receipt. Try it out with the dimmers in your home, and if it works, feel free to buy as many as you need. If not, most major retailers will be happy to let you return the bulb and exchange it for something else. At some point, you might also consider upgrading your dimmers to newer models designed to work with LEDs. Big names like Lutron and Leviton are your best bet there.
One last point: If dimming is truly important in your home, then you should really consider smart bulbs. Most use their own, built-in mechanisms to handle dimming, so you don't need a dimmer switch at all. Dimming mechanisms like those are great because they won't flicker or buzz, and you'll usually be able to sync things up with a voice assistant like Siri or Alexa, which opens the door to commands like, "set the lights to 20%."
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Knowing where it's OK to place an LED will ensure that the bulb won't fizzle ahead of its time.
You probably know that LED bulbs run a lot cooler than their incandescent cousins, but that doesn't mean they don't produce heat. LED bulbs do get hot, but the heat is pulled away by a heat sink in the base of the bulb. From there, the heat dissipates into the air and the LED bulb stays cool, helping to keep its promise of a long life.
And therein lies the problem: The bulb needs a way to dissipate the heat. If an LED bulb is placed in an enclosed housing, the heat won't have anywhere to go, sending it right back to the bulb and sentencing it to a slow and painful death.
Remember, LED bulbs are electronic devices. Just like with your phone or your laptop, it isn't good to let them overheat.
That's why it's fine to stick with incandescent, fluorescent and halogen bulbs for enclosed fixtures. LEDs will work, too, but in some cases, the heat buildup inside the fixture will reduce the bulb's lifespan.
Read on: Best LED Lightbulb for Every Room in Your House
50000 hours is very big amount of time. Does each led light stand to this standard? Almost all manufacturers write those big figures in product description. But what is the reality?
Reality is not always same as promising in all LED lights. Forget the warranty; one or two years are just 10% of the total working hours. What is the life after the warranty period? What if you are commercial user?
Customer is not always getting what they expect from cheap products. So what to consider when choosing between low and high quality LED lights?
Weight
This might be weird but this is true, You can’t get good quality in very low weight product. As all LED lights require good heat dispassion, It can’t be accomplished without good amount of aluminum. Thin heat sink can provide more area in less weight, but it can’t transfer enough heat for the removal. Only active (fan based) cooling provides solution to this. Some china based producers provide 12-20W lights in very low weight that feels like plastic body. These products won’t perform well even in small span of time.
LED Chip
LED chips are manufactured by various big and small enterprises in the world. Japan and USA based suppliers make highest quality for longer life and more reliability. All is the matter of materials used in making chip. Larger chip provide more lights, good stability against current variations, but it costs more. Cheap and small led chip provides less light and stability. Ceramic COB lights are totally different in terms of size, they use multiple small chips to provide more lights and stability.
Power supply
This is the heart of LED lightings. LEDs are kind of semiconductor that needs to be driven with carefully and according to ratings. Led needs to be driven with constant current DC supply for longer life. It is technical stuffs, but if you want to know here is the link: http://www.maximintegrated.com/app-notes/index.mvp/id/3256
What makes LED driver unreliable? Low quality components and low life capacitors makes them unreliable. Non-branded Chinese LED driver use regular capacitors which work for only 1000 hours at elevated temperature. We at Charlston Lights always calculate life of capacitors to work for more than 10 years.
Light quality
Another costly thing in LED lights is rare earth phosphor. Cheap producer use low quality phosphor to lower the cost. If you see spot light with little different colors of white, it might be sign of low quality. Maintaining same colors in white is challenging task for LED producers. Color rendering is also point to be considered. Cheap LED lights generally don’t have good CRI, As good CRI also requires high quality phosphor.
Optics
Many people choose LED lights as a new trend in interiors. They really don’t consider what kind of lights they need. Most of the cheap LED lights have same optics for multiple requirements. A spot light can’t make enough illumination in drawing room. Opaque cover is not always for good lighting. It might be used to hide cheap components in Lights.
Construction
Finally all together, how they construct LED lights is also important. Design, look, feel and strength need to be checked at time of choosing LED. If paint or powder coating is not applied well, there might be good chance that inside construction are also cheap. Chinese manufacturer produce large amount of products to compete price. Fast & careless production might not last longer.
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