Why I'm loving LEDs
Thank you to GE for sponsoring this post. All content and opinions are my own, aside from the infographic, which GE provided.
When we bought this house, compact fluorescent bulbs were having their heyday, and we bought quite a few of them for the fixtures here.
At the time, LEDs were available, but they were crazy expensive, and honestly, not very good.
Who wants to pay $50 for a bluish light that barely illuminates anything?
Anyway, we had a lot of CFLs, and as they'd been burning out, we'd been replacing them with some incandescent bulbs we had stashed around here.
I'd kind of forgotten how quickly incandescent bulbs burn out, though! I was used to the CFLs, which were lasting us about 10 years apiece, and I felt like I was replacing incandescent light bulbs every other month.
So, I was super pleased to learn that LEDs have come such a long way in the last ten years.
My first experience with LEDs came when we got recessed lighting installed in our office.
Our electrician assured us that the new LEDs were the way to go, and he was right!
They're affordable and dimmable, they provide soft light, and they are so, so, so much more pleasant than the tube fluorescent lights we had before.
LED bulbs look totally normal, so I can use them in ceiling fans and other places where bulbs are exposed.
We even have an LED light in our bathroom fan.
I now keep LEDs on hand to replace our incandescents as they burn out and my little frugal heart is very happy at the idea of not having to replace these for years. Yay!
Here are the main reasons I'm digging LEDs:
The purchase price isn't much higher than the price of incandescent bulbs.
In fact, you can get a lot of bulbs for less than $5 apiece, especially when you buy a multi-pack.
LEDs stay cool.
Incandescent bulbs give off 90% of their energy as heat, but LED bulbs remain cool. This is really lovely in a small room (such as my bathroom!) in the summertime.
In a small space, you really notice that a multi-bulb fixture can throw off a lot of heat with incandescents.
LEDs use 70-90% less energy than traditional bulbs.
This is a pretty awesome benefit. It's not often you can find energy-saving alternatives that cut down on energy usage to this degree.
(Imagine if you could get a heat pump that used 70-90% less energy! A girl can dream.)
LEDs last. And last. And last.
LEDs promise to last 50 times longer than incandescents and 8-10 times longer than CFLs, which are already a pretty long-lasting bulb.
For instance, this GE LED bulb promises to last 22.8 years at 3 hours of use per day.
Which means I will be 62 years old when it burns out. Seriously impressive!
I like LED light better than CFL light.
I never could quite get used to the harshness of CFL light, and I'm pleased that the soft white LED bulbs have a gentle, less sterile feel than any CFLs I ever tried.
LEDs are simple to dispose of.
CFLs require special disposal handling when they wear out, but LEDs do not.
There are recycling programs currently available for holiday LED lights, and I would venture to guess that by the time my newly-purchased LED bulbs wear out, there may be recycling programs for regular LED bulbs as well.
LEDs are a green choice.
Because they use less energy per hour of use and because they last so long before they need to be thrown away, LED bulbs are a more environmentally-friendly option than both incandescents and LEDs.
GE sent me an infographic with some pretty sweet stats about the benefits of LEDs.
(click on the infographic below for a larger view)
Take the GE pLEDge and get a $1 coupon!
GE wants to encourage all of you to save money and energy by using these long-lasting bulbs.
Sooo, to make the switch even sweeter, GE is offering a $1 printable coupon to everyone who takes the GE pLEDge, which is super easy to do online.
Click here to take the pLEDge!
GE makes LEDs in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, so odds are good that you'll be able to find an LED alternative for almost any light bulb in your house.
Here's a handy listing of stores where you can buy GE LED bulbs.
And of course, there are lots of GE LED options on Amazon.
How do you feel about LEDs? Have you been making the switch at your house?
How we failed to notice our new house had over a hundred recessed lights, mostly on dimmers, is beyond me, but somehow we did. We were shocked when we got our first utility bill. This was in 2013, when dimmable flood bulbs were much more expensive than they are now. We spent over $1200 on LED bulbs (Gah!). They were worth every penny. That huge light bulb bill has been mitigated by nearly four years of significantly lower utility bills.
The light quality is lovely, and the bulbs really last. Since some of our ceilings are 14' tall, this is especially nice.
The only challenge is the dining room light fixture. It needs short, 360 degree, dimmable bulbs with a standard base. They don't seem to exist yet, but I keep watching. I'll snap them up when they do and we'll be 100% LED, inside and out. Woot!
We use LED bulbs for ALL of the lights at our house. It's great to know that we're saving electricity and money at the same time!
I recently convinced my place of work to gradually switch all of our lighting to LED. My office was first 🙂 I noticed the LEDs were much less harsh than the previous lighting and my headaches disappeared!
Agreed. The new leds check every box.
We don't have a choice BUT to use LEDs- incandescents are no longer allowed in our jurisdiction.
I'm curious about how you find the initial dimness of LEDs. It drives me crazy (not that I can do anything about it!). Do you know if there are certain brands of LEDs that don't take as long to "warm up"?
I have some LED lights and they do not take time to warm up. Perhaps you meant the CFL bulbs, which do, and that is yet another reason LED lights are better. We are swapping out the CFL lights on our porches with new LED fixtures, it's nice that we don't need to wait to let the dog out or run to the car.
Same here. My LED bulbs are instant on. My CFLs definitely weren't, though! I hated that.
Do LED's affect the colors in your home? I want to switch out the bulbs in our bathroom, but it's such a hard space to decorate that I'm hesitant (I am terrible with colors/paints/lighting/decorating in general, and the bathroom is the only room in the whole house that I actually like).
I haven't had any difficulties with that except when I tried the daylight version. I vastly prefer the soft white, as I felt like the daylight bulbs were too blue.
If you're used to incandescent light, then definitely give the soft white LEDs a try.
It depends on your colors. If you have neutral colors go with an led bulb that has a color output of 2700-3200k. Blacks, whites, and grays go with a 3500-4000k color output. 5000 and up appear brighter but are better for shops and garages. Basically 4000 is pure white light. As you go lower, the more yellow the light becomes. Go higher and the light becomes more blue.
Agreed! We switched to LEDs about a year ago and I can't believe we ever used incandescent bulbs. I like that they don't generate heat, so it keeps the house cool (which is a good thing here in Texas!). We need to replace a few dated fixtures in our house that don't take LED lightbulbs; hopefully that will help lower our energy bills over time.
Sorry, I use incandescent bulbs for everything. I have a stash in my basement that should last me the next 100 years. I will gladly pay the electric bill. No one can convince me the glow of LED is even remotely close to the warm glow of the incandescent and the migraines I get from the florescent bulbs (not to mention the mercury used is not high on my list) - I think not.
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of fluorescent lights both for the way they look and the mercury factor.
And I think it's fine if incandescent bulbs are the thing you choose to kind of splurge on. For me, it's using my clothes dryer!
I so agree, Kristen! There are just those little things in life that make us happy 🙂
Yep. And hauling my laundry out into the backyard to hang on the line was just NOT making me happy. Heh. 🙂
First started using LEDs last November, after finally getting fed up with how fast our remaining stash of incandescents were burning out.
We invested close to $150 in various sizes, formats for our entire apartment, which has, we discovered with surprise, a LOT of lightbulbs (Hint: You may think you need "bright" light, but those day white versions? Bright but also reminiscent of harsh CFLs. Stick with Soft Whites and if you're using multiples in same room, be sure to use from same manufacturer. A bulb can say 60W equivalent, Soft White and you will still have variances==enough to notice--so stick to same from same company.
We had an immediate and substantial drop in our electric bill, which could not be accounted for any other way. (All our major appliances are energy efficient and when they were first used we registered a drop in KWH.)
Yes, it's an investment but they will look good, work, for years. And really save energy. If that's not enough incentive, there is the savings in electricity.
There are so many choices out there so that you can find whatever you need. We ended up using 60W soft white for most lamps, etc. with exception of office where we needed a couple of 100W equivalents. Some are so bright that we used only 40 W equivalents.
You won't regret the switchover. Take your time selecting bulbs and if you can check out displays in retail stores.
Also, only buy where you can return if you don't like the way they look.
We are switching over to LED throughout the house; when a CFL or incandescent burns out, an LED replaces it. It's taking a while, but I'd say at least 4/5's of our bulbs are LED now. I love them, and the first one I ever installed, the one that gets a ton of use because it lights the stove and refrigerator area of my kitchen, has been working faithfully for close to 10 years so far. Some of my much lesser used CFL's are five years old or older, but most of them burned out in 2 years or less, which I also hated -- I had incandescent bulbs that lasted that long, but CFL was supposed to be "long-lasting." Plus, we had no place to dispose of CFL bulbs safely.
Our Christmas lights are LED and have been for about 5 years. It's so nice to pull out the strands and have them all light up, year after year.
We're switching over from CFLs to LEDs little by little. Unfortunately I bought some cheap CREE ones which have failed on me. Now I'm replacing those with better branded ones.
I am keeping good old incandescent bulbs in closets and my garage door openers because they are on so little that LEDs wouldn't be a money saving option at that point.
Oh, nuts! Those are bad? I have a few of them that I bought on clearance. Crossing fingers...
The Philips 461961 have 4.5 stars and 1,200 reviews on Amazon, but it looks like they only have a 10,000 hour life and aren't dimmable, so buyer beware.
Which model Cree did you get? I'm hoping the Cree SA19s are the better bet since they have a 25,000 hour life and work with dimmers.
I like LED bulbs but have had a miserable time finding the equivalent to 100 watt incandescent bulbs. I need a lot of light in my workroom and kitchen and the 60 watt equivalents that I've bought just don't produce enough light for those rooms. Does anyone have suggestions for 100 watt equivalents that you've used and found to be good that I could order online? Any help would be much appreciated.
Kim,
Try looking for horticultural LED bulbs at garden stores or online, and on light sites, such as 1000bulbs. Many of the horticultural bulbs are daylight equivalent and really bright.
Good luck!
We have found some 100 watt equivalent at Costco (not sure if they are available online) that so far seem to be good. I think they are soft white. We found with LED bulbs you really need to watch the color of the light. some have a blueish tinge we don't like.
We have a houseful of CFL bulbs, and a boxful, actually two or three boxes full of the incandescent bulbs that they replaced. (Anyone want to buy some old incandescent bulbs?) The CFLs have been saving us money for a long time now. I have started to buy a few LED bulbs - Costco sells them - but I am reluctant to dump the CFLs. More boxes of bulbs - CFLs this time in the basement?
Why dump them? Why not use what you have until they run out? You have already spent the money, the resources have already been expended, the shipping truck miles already belched out into the air. Might as well use them and when they are used up there will likely be products out that are an improvement on what you could buy today.
Yep, exactly. That's what I've been doing at our house...just replacing them as the incandescents burn out.
Good article. The only thing i would say is do the wait for incandescent / CFL's / Halogen to burn out. Replace immediately - seems like a waste but when you do the maths the amount of energy saved more than makes up for throwing out your old bulbs immediately.
I agree!
We switched our track lighting to leds after an energy audit because they are safer with the new insulation. (We did also upgrade to more expensive buckets in case someone in the future switches back to regular bulbs that could set the insulation on fire without the new buckets.)
My oldest son had a mercury exposure as a very small boy and has had a lot of trouble ever since with recovering his health. I won't have CFLs or fluorescent bulbs in my house.
Consequently, when incandescents were starting to phase out I stocked up. The LEDs were insanely expensive and my fixtures hated them and they would burn out in a couple of months. My stockpile should last us several years.
Our recessed lights in the kitchen are now playing nicely with some pricey halogens (different than LED? I'm not sure.) but everything else is on incandescent until I run out. By then LEDs or whatever replaces them will be better and probably cheaper. Regardless, our electric bill and usage is quite low. Less than $100 a month in the summer for 5 people in a 3 bedroom house seems reasonable to me and it doesn't seem worth it to trash the large stack of incandescents to spend money all over again on LEDs. One day we will get there.
Okay. Not an LED question here, but as I scrolled through the pictures I noticed you have some type of device on your shower (bathroom picture) head. I'm guessing it allows you to use less water in the shower. Could you give some information about it? Our water usage seems to be really high lately.
It's actually just kind of a weird shower head...the part that hangs down has a dial on it that adjusts the spray to your liking. But it's not a water-saving shower head per se.
Did you know that Target has a 4 pack of GE LED bulbs on sale this week for 7.99 (regularly 14.99)? The coupon took another $1.00 off. Thank you!
Ooh, wonderful! Such good timing.
We bought an LED bulb for our outside light six years ago when we bought our house. It was $35! It's still going strong though and I love not having to worry about replacing the bulbs for so long. The utility savings is just a bonus. We are also doing the switch over as they burn out thing. It's great how much cheaper they're getting!
I love LED bulbs. The only thing to be aware of is that older dimmer switches don't always play nice with LED bulbs. I have recessed spot lights in my kitchen on a dimmer switch. When I changed over from the 50w halogen bulbs to LEDs I started to get a bit of a flicker now and then. I mentioned it to an electrician and he told me to swap out the dimmer switch. Fortunately he was right and a new $20, LED compatible, dimmer switch fixed the problem.
We really prefer the LED. Most of what we have is from Costco and Sams. The winners for sure are the 100 watt equivalent at Coscto in the past year. Watch the color of the light. Some make a blueish tone that seems odd to us.
We have had issues with LED bulbs though. We find they flicker on occasion. Not sure why. We actually have one n the bathroom that has gone crazy and started to flash like a strobe on occasion. We ended up with several dead within a year but took them back to costco.
We love that they don't need to "warm up" like cfl bulbs- especially in the garage and outside.
Slowly but surely, we've started using LED bulbs at home as well. Of course, we're still waiting for our CFL's to burn out, and that will definitely take a while 😀