How to Change GU10 LED Bulbs ?

Beginners' Guide on How to Change GU10 LED Bulbs

How to Change GU10 LED Bulbs ?

GU10 LED bulb (more appropriately called lamp), as their structure differs from a standard bulb--are usually quartz/halogen, although LED versions are available for some fixtures. Modern track lighting and other ceiling fixtures use these lamps to produce a bright white light with a moderate beam spread. Unlike halogen lamps with a simple two-prong base that pull straight out of their sockets, gu10 lamps have a cylinder at the base of each prong are wider than the prongs that connect the lamp to its socket.
http://sheerled.co.uk/
To change a GU10 LED light bulb, you need to switch off the power first, to keep you safe from being electrocuted.

1. Stand on a ladder so you can comfortably reach your light fixture.


2. Press the existing Gu10 lamp into the fixture using both thumbs.

3. Turn the lamp counter-clockwise as you continue to press inward, using the pressure of your thumbs to grip the bulb.

4. Release your pressure on the lamp when it won't turn any farther.

5. Pull the lamp straight out of the socket. You may need to wiggle it gently to get the cylindrical "feet" aligned correctly with the larger openings in the socket.

6. Discard the old lamp and remove packaging from your new lamp. Line the prongs on the new lamp up with the wide openings on the socket.

7. Press inward on the edges of the new lamp with your thumbs and twist the lamp clockwise as far as it will go.

Tips:

If your gu10 lamp does not have a glass cover across the front, be very careful to only handle it by the reflector. If oils from your fingers get on the inner lamp, they can cause it to heat improperly and explode.

If you want to know how to install a screwbase LED light bulb, just check out this guide for the easy solution.

LED Light Bulbs Your Brighter Choice

Why Are LED Light Bulbs Your Brighter Choice?

As we all know, LED light bulbs are a huge improvement over incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescents (CFLs).

With LED light bulb or lamp technologies improving, there is a growing market for energy efficient lighting options for businesses! Today, we will discuss and take a look at some reasons why we need or choose LED light bulbs above all. Why LED bulbs are brighter choice, and what benefits of LED lights will bring to our life:

1. Carbook Footprint
LEDs emit just under 514 lbs of CO2 per year, while CFLs (1028 lbs of CO2 per year), and incandescents (whopping 4405 lbs of CO2 per year!). Obviousely, LED bulb is much eco-friendly, green, and environment-saving choice.

2. Energy Efficient
LED lamps use just 6 to 8 watts of electricity, versus CFLs' 13 to 15 watts, and incandescent bulbs, which emit 60 watts of electricity! This should be the main reason why we need LED lights, it can save a lot of money and energy for your business! According to the U.S.

3. Longevity
LED lamp can last a surprising 80,000 hours, in contrast to CFL bulbs (50,000 hours), and incandescent bulbs (10,000 hours).That's why people love and in favor of LED bulb.

4. Safety
It's a priority and factoring point in our daily life.  LED lamps offer low voltage, are safe to install, can be exposed to rain/snow and contain zero filaments. However, CFL bulbs contain mercury and argon content; emits radio frequency radiation; emits UV radiation, and generates "dirty" electricity! Incandescent bulbs are deemed hazardous for use, containing a cocktail of toxic materials, in addition to its susceptibility to overheating and damage.


For these four reasons, we will make our brighter choice of course, and maximize home lighting with LED bulbs. Since LED lightbulbs last for decades, save electricity, offer extra features, and their prices are plummeting. It's time you switched to LED. (If you need any help choosing LED bulbs or lights, please visit sheerled.com (US) or sheerled.co.uk (UK) for all your LED lighting solutions.)

5 Steps to Buying a Energy Saving Light Bulb

Guide to energy saving led bulbs..

Five years ago I bought my first LED light bulbs. They were to replace halogens in my bathroom. I spent too much money on not enough lumens and way too many kelvin. You know what I mean?

No? Perfect. Let's make a deal?!

If you spend ten minutes reading this post I promise you that by the end of it you'll understand how to buy a low energy light bulb. In return I'll try not to bore you senseless.

Ready? Let's do this. With five simple questions.

1) What fitting do you need?

This is simple, but you really don't want to mess it up.

Although there are literally hundreds of light fittings in existence, your home probably only has a couple. I've got two in my ceiling fittings, a couple more in table lamps. In the image below there are some common ones for the UK and US.

'B' is for Bayonett, it's a bit of a British Empire thing. 'E' is for Edison Screw, dominant in the US thanks to Thomas.

You don't need to know what they mean. But if you scribble down the fittings before you start shopping for bulbs not only will they fit, they'll be the right voltage too.

2) What shape bulb do you want?

Bulb shape is not just a question of liking the look of a bulb, it is about how it throws light. The design of the bulb determines what direction the light goes, so you need to consider what you want the bulb to do.

There is literally an alphabet describing different bulb shapes, but since I promised not to bore you I'm just not going to go there. All you need to do for shape is use your common sense.

For a ceiling pendent you might want an 'omnidirectional' bulb like the arbitrary, stick or spiral shape. For a lamp you might need a candle shape with a broad spread. And if you are putting a spot into a recessed downlight you'll need a reflector with an appropriate beam width for the context.

A bulb that throws the wrong angle light can be really annoying, so do take the time to contemplate the shape before you buy.

3) How bright does it need to be?

It is no longer enough to think about bulb brightness in terms of watts. That was fine when we only had incandescents, but now we need to start thinking in lumens.

This is particularly the case when buying LEDs, because the use of the term 'replacement' is can be abused by bulb re-sellers, and occasionally by lesser manufacturers too. The following tables are a rough explanation of how many lumens you get from your watts for different bulb technologies for a standard fitting.

Now I'm very sorry to do this, but I had to make two charts to explain this properly. One for our readers in the low voltage (120V) countries like the US, Canada, Brazil and Japan. And a second one for readers in high voltage (240V) countries, that's the rest of the world.

The American Lumen:

If you live in the US, or anywhere else with a lower voltage grid, please look at this first chart. If you live elsewhere skip straight to the second.

At the top of this chart you have the brightness of the bulb in lumens. This is the number you need to start thinking in.

Let's say you're in the US and want to replace an old 60W bulb and get a similar amount of light. Then you know you'll need to get at least 800 lumens in order to match the brightness of the old 60W .

Got it? If you know your lumens, you won't be mis-sold a 'replacement bulb' that isn't bright enough.

The British Lumen

In the rest of the world grids we have higher voltage, meaning that lumen equivalent for standard incandescents is different. That's the case here in the UK.

At the top of this chart you have the brightness of the bulb in lumens. This is the number you need to start thinking in.

Let's say you're in the UK and want to replace an old 60W bulb and get a similar amount of light. Then you know you'll need to get at least 700 lumens to get a similar brightness to the old bulb.

Knowing your lumens means you will get the brightness you want, and avoid being mis-sold 'replacement bulbs'.

A quick word on spotlights:

Just spot me a second here. Both the two charts above are designed to help you replace a normal lightbulb. When it comes to spotlights you can often experiment with going for fewer lumens. In our bathrooms I have replaced 700lm halogens with 320lm LEDs and actually prefer the light. The result is a 90% energy use reduction per bulb.

4) Do you want warm or cold light?

This question might sound complicated, but it is dead easy and one of the great things about LEDs.

The temperature of light can be measured in terms of 'kelvin'. Very orange light has a low number of kelvin, for example a candle is about 1,500K. Daylight is much colder, often above 5,000K. Here is the scale.

When it comes to household light bulbs the temperature choices are very simple. Most people simply want what is called 'warm white' (2,700k) to replicate the warm, slightly yellow glow of an old incandescent or halogen.

In a kitchen, bathroom or other situations you may prefer a slightly less yellow light, sometimes called a natural white (3,000K). You may want to try cool white (4,000K). Or for a very specific style (5,000K). Anything above that starts to get a little blue.

This type of temperature choice is mostly associated with LEDs. If your home has a quite modern style you should definitely consider trying some cooler temperatures, as they can look great in the right context.

5) Are LEDs good value yet?

Compact fluorescent (CFLs) bulbs are now so cheap that a CFL can pay itself off with energy savings in just months for a well used bulb. I personally quite like CFLs in the right context, but if you want instant light, dimming or cooler light they aren't great.

LEDs on the other hand are gradually overcoming many of these problems. The main issue with LEDs at this point is their upfront cost. This is particularly true for 75W and 100W replacements (I'm waiting for prices to drop).

With this in mind let's crunch some numbers and see how the payback is for LEDs. In the following chart I estimate how quickly energy savings will recoup the cost of replacing a 60W incandescent with a 10W LED that costs £6 ($10), assuming the bulb is used for 2 hours each day.

Because of the huge difference in the prices of electricity the £6 outlay for the LED pays itself off in anything from 9 months in expensive Denmark to three and a half years in India or China, where electricity is cheap.

Now a 60W LED for £6 is still quite cheap. If you are paying closer to £9 you'd need to add 50% to these payoff times. On the other hand if you are using the bulb 4 hours a day, then you should halve them. What does this mean for you in practical terms?

• Cheaper LEDs payback faster
• Payback is faster where electricity is expensive (the UK)
• The more you use a bulb the faster the payback
• Replacing CFLs with LEDs is not yet cost effective

In most cases the one year running cost of an incandescent bulb you use regularly (>2 hours a day) is greater than any drop in LED prices we are likely to see. So it makes sense to switch when you see a decent value bulb. However, if you don't use a bulb much (< 1 hour a day) you may want to wait for prices to fall a little more. Especially for 100W replacements which are still extortionate.

I have one incandescent left in my loft that I'd be lucky to use for 10 hours a year. I'll probably only switch it if it blows.

5 Steps to Buying a Energy Saving Light Bulb

If you've made it this far you now know a lot about light bulbs. Because I promised not to bore you I've decided not to discuss dimming (read the labels), color rendering (above 80 please) and bulb lifespan (buy a known brand).

Let's just recap the five steps:

1. Fitting: Write down the code
2. Shape: Decide on the best shape
3. Brightness: Get enough lumens!
4. Temperature: Warm or cool?
5. Cost: Look for good value bulbs

Like I said in the introduction, I bought my first LED five years ago and only really got the first of these five steps correct. But things have changed an awful lot in five years, and LEDs are now becoming a really sensible option. CFLs remain excellent value due to their low prices and running costs, but you can't always get the light you want.

If you have never bought LEDs before I highly recommend trialling a single bulb, or spotlight, first before buying too many. LEDs are not cheap and last a long time, so you want to be sure about fitting, shape, lumens and kelvins before going all in on them. I also recommend looking for specials on known brands or having a money back guarantee up your sleeve.

I wish you much success with your LED hunt and hope you get the right fit, shape, brightness and temperature at a decent price. Most importantly I hope you prefer the light of your new bulb, that's the main test of success.

- See more at: http://sheerled.co.uk/

How Many Lumens Do You Need?

Five years ago I bought my first LED light bulbs. They were to replace halogens in my bathroom. I spent too much money on not enough lumens and way too many kelvin. You know what I mean?

No? Perfect. Let's make a deal?!

If you spend ten minutes reading this post I promise you that by the end of it you'll understand how to buy a low energy light bulb. In return I'll try not to bore you senseless.

Ready? Let's do this. With five simple questions.

1) What fitting do you need?

This is simple, but you really don't want to mess it up.

Although there are literally hundreds of light fittings in existence, your home probably only has a couple. I've got two in my ceiling fittings, a couple more in table lamps. In the image below there are some common ones for the UK and US.

'B' is for Bayonett, it's a bit of a British Empire thing. 'E' is for Edison Screw, dominant in the US thanks to Thomas.

You don't need to know what they mean. But if you scribble down the fittings before you start shopping for bulbs not only will they fit, they'll be the right voltage too.

2) What shape bulb do you want?

Bulb shape is not just a question of liking the look of a bulb, it is about how it throws light. The design of the bulb determines what direction the light goes, so you need to consider what you want the bulb to do.

There is literally an alphabet describing different bulb shapes, but since I promised not to bore you I'm just not going to go there. All you need to do for shape is use your common sense.

For a ceiling pendent you might want an 'omnidirectional' bulb like the arbitrary, stick or spiral shape. For a lamp you might need a candle shape with a broad spread. And if you are putting a spot into a recessed downlight you'll need a reflector with an appropriate beam width for the context.

A bulb that throws the wrong angle light can be really annoying, so do take the time to contemplate the shape before you buy.

3) How bright does it need to be?

It is no longer enough to think about bulb brightness in terms of watts. That was fine when we only had incandescents, but now we need to start thinking in lumens.

This is particularly the case when buying LEDs, because the use of the term 'replacement' is can be abused by bulb re-sellers, and occasionally by lesser manufacturers too. The following tables are a rough explanation of how many lumens you get from your watts for different bulb technologies for a standard fitting.

Now I'm very sorry to do this, but I had to make two charts to explain this properly. One for our readers in the low voltage (120V) countries like the US, Canada, Brazil and Japan. And a second one for readers in high voltage (240V) countries, that's the rest of the world.

The American Lumen:

If you live in the US, or anywhere else with a lower voltage grid, please look at this first chart. If you live elsewhere skip straight to the second.

At the top of this chart you have the brightness of the bulb in lumens. This is the number you need to start thinking in.

Let's say you're in the US and want to replace an old 60W bulb and get a similar amount of light. Then you know you'll need to get at least 800 lumens in order to match the brightness of the old 60W .

Got it? If you know your lumens, you won't be mis-sold a 'replacement bulb' that isn't bright enough.

The British Lumen

In the rest of the world grids we have higher voltage, meaning that lumen equivalent for standard incandescents is different. That's the case here in the UK.

At the top of this chart you have the brightness of the bulb in lumens. This is the number you need to start thinking in.

Let's say you're in the UK and want to replace an old 60W bulb and get a similar amount of light. Then you know you'll need to get at least 700 lumens to get a similar brightness to the old bulb.

Knowing your lumens means you will get the brightness you want, and avoid being mis-sold 'replacement bulbs'.

A quick word on spotlights:

Just spot me a second here. Both the two charts above are designed to help you replace a normal lightbulb. When it comes to spotlights you can often experiment with going for fewer lumens. In our bathrooms I have replaced 700lm halogens with 320lm LEDs and actually prefer the light. The result is a 90% energy use reduction per bulb.

4) Do you want warm or cold light?

This question might sound complicated, but it is dead easy and one of the great things about LEDs.

The temperature of light can be measured in terms of 'kelvin'. Very orange light has a low number of kelvin, for example a candle is about 1,500K. Daylight is much colder, often above 5,000K. Here is the scale.

When it comes to household light bulbs the temperature choices are very simple. Most people simply want what is called 'warm white' (2,700k) to replicate the warm, slightly yellow glow of an old incandescent or halogen.

In a kitchen, bathroom or other situations you may prefer a slightly less yellow light, sometimes called a natural white (3,000K). You may want to try cool white (4,000K). Or for a very specific style (5,000K). Anything above that starts to get a little blue.

This type of temperature choice is mostly associated with LEDs. If your home has a quite modern style you should definitely consider trying some cooler temperatures, as they can look great in the right context.

5) Are LEDs good value yet?

Compact fluorescent (CFLs) bulbs are now so cheap that a CFL can pay itself off with energy savings in just months for a well used bulb. I personally quite like CFLs in the right context, but if you want instant light, dimming or cooler light they aren't great.

LEDs on the other hand are gradually overcoming many of these problems. The main issue with LEDs at this point is their upfront cost. This is particularly true for 75W and 100W replacements (I'm waiting for prices to drop).

With this in mind let's crunch some numbers and see how the payback is for LEDs. In the following chart I estimate how quickly energy savings will recoup the cost of replacing a 60W incandescent with a 10W LED that costs £6 ($10), assuming the bulb is used for 2 hours each day.

Because of the huge difference in the prices of electricity the £6 outlay for the LED pays itself off in anything from 9 months in expensive Denmark to three and a half years in India or China, where electricity is cheap.

Now a 60W LED for £6 is still quite cheap. If you are paying closer to £9 you'd need to add 50% to these payoff times. On the other hand if you are using the bulb 4 hours a day, then you should halve them. What does this mean for you in practical terms?

• Cheaper LEDs payback faster
• Payback is faster where electricity is expensive (the UK)
• The more you use a bulb the faster the payback
• Replacing CFLs with LEDs is not yet cost effective

In most cases the one year running cost of an incandescent bulb you use regularly (>2 hours a day) is greater than any drop in LED prices we are likely to see. So it makes sense to switch when you see a decent value bulb. However, if you don't use a bulb much (< 1 hour a day) you may want to wait for prices to fall a little more. Especially for 100W replacements which are still extortionate.

I have one incandescent left in my loft that I'd be lucky to use for 10 hours a year. I'll probably only switch it if it blows.

5 Steps to Buying a Energy Saving Light Bulb

If you've made it this far you now know a lot about light bulbs. Because I promised not to bore you I've decided not to discuss dimming (read the labels), color rendering (above 80 please) and bulb lifespan (buy a known brand).

Let's just recap the five steps:

1. Fitting: Write down the code
2. Shape: Decide on the best shape
3. Brightness: Get enough lumens!
4. Temperature: Warm or cool?
5. Cost: Look for good value bulbs

Like I said in the introduction, I bought my first LED five years ago and only really got the first of these five steps correct. But things have changed an awful lot in five years, and LEDs are now becoming a really sensible option. CFLs remain excellent value due to their low prices and running costs, but you can't always get the light you want.

If you have never bought LEDs before I highly recommend trialling a single bulb, or spotlight, first before buying too many. LEDs are not cheap and last a long time, so you want to be sure about fitting, shape, lumens and kelvins before going all in on them. I also recommend looking for specials on known brands or having a money back guarantee up your sleeve.

I wish you much success with your LED hunt and hope you get the right fit, shape, brightness and temperature at a decent price. Most importantly I hope you prefer the light of your new bulb, that's the main test of success.

- See more at: http://sheerled.co.uk/

Know what you're getting into before investing in LED light bulbs.

As your incandescents burn out, it's a good time to consider switching to LED bulbs. By now, you probably know that LEDs have an impressive lifespan (20-something years!) and are very cost-effective. You probably also know that while they've come down in price quite a bit, some options are up to five times more expensive than traditional bulbs.
Despite the cost, now's the right time to switch to LEDs. These bulbs have made significant advances over the last few years, finally delivering the warm light incandescents have comforted us with for decades.

More than ever, there is also an overwhelming number of LED varieties, and choosing an LED is entirely different from picking up an incandescent. Before you head to the store, find out what you need to know about choosing the right LED bulbs.

Learn the lingo
Forget what you know about incandescents -- your watts are no good here.

When shopping for bulbs, you're probably accustomed to looking for watts, an indication of how bright the bulb will be. The brightness of LEDs, however, is determined a little differently.

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, but for LEDs, watts aren't a great predictor of how bright the bulb will be. (The point, after all, is that they draw less energy.)

For example, an LED bulb with comparable brightness to a 60W incandescent is only 8 to 12 watts.

But don't bother doing the math -- there isn't a uniform way to covert incandescent watts to LED watts. Instead, a different form of measurement should be used: lumens.

The lumen (lm) is the real measurement of brightness provided by a light bulb, and is the number you should look for when shopping for LEDs. For reference, here's a chart that shows the watt-lumen conversion for incandescent

Mind the color
You can always count on incandescent providing a warm, yellowish hue. But LEDs come in a wide range of colors.


The popular colors available for LEDs are "warm white" or "soft white," and "bright white."As shown off by the Philips Hue, LED bulbs are capable of displaying an impressive color range, from purple to red, to a spectrum of whites and yellows. For the home, however, you're likely looking for something similar to the light that incandescents produce.

Warm white and soft white will produce a yellow hue, close to incandescents, while bulbs labeled as bright white will produce a whiter light, closer to daylight and similar to what you see in retail stores.

If you want to get technical, light color (color temperature) is measured in kelvins. The lower the number, the warmer (yellower) the light. So, your typical incandescent is somewhere between 2,700 and 3,500K. If that's the color you're going for, look for this range while shopping for LED bulbs.

Set your savings expectations
As Martin LaMonica points out, LED bulbs are like hybrid cars: cheaper to operate but pricey upfront.

When switching to LED bulbs, don't expect to save buckets of cash. Instead, think of it as an investment. Luckily, competition has increased and LED bulbs have come down in price (like this $5 LED from Philips), but you should still expect to pay much more than an incandescent.

Eventually, the LED bulbs will pay off, and in the meantime, you'll enjoy less heat production, longer bulb life, and even the option of controlling them with your smartphone.

Bottom line: unless you're replacing many incandescent bulbs in a large house, you won't see significant savings in your electricity bill.

For a detailed breakdown of the cost-effectiveness of LED bulbs, check out this useful post.

The 'dimmable LED' conundrum
Because of their circuitry, LEDs are not 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 dimmers, which were likely designed to work with incandescents, work by cutting off the amount of electricity sent to the bulb. The less electricity drawn, the dimmer the light. But with your newly acquired knowledge of LED lingo, you know that there is no direct correlation between LED brightness and energy drawn.

If you'd like your LED to be dimmable, you need to do one of two things: find LED bulbs compatible with traditional dimmers, or replace your current dimming switch with a leading-edge (LED-compatible) dimmer.

When shopping for LEDs, it helps to know what kind of dimming switch you have, but if you don't know (or would rather not go through the trouble), simply search for LED bulbs compatible with standard incandescent dimmers. To make things easier for you, we tested a slew of them to find out which LED bulbs work best with dimmers.

Plan for placement
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 dramatically 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 very 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.

Consider where you'd like to place your LED bulbs. If you have fully or semi-enclosed fixtures you need to light up, look for LEDs that are approved for recessed or enclosed spaces.

It's time to go LED

One of the goals I had in my recent house renovation was to change every light bulb in the house to LEDs. I was dividing the house into two apartments and had to pull all the halogen spotlights out of the ceiling that was now a fire separation, and was finishing what was the basement, so new lighting was needed throughout. Most of the house was lit with compact fluorescents, and I never liked them very much.

But the main reason I could do this is the fact that in the last year, the cost of changing to LEDs has dropped like a stone. There is a wide range of bulbs now available for under ten bucks, and if you are willing to spend a bit more there are some very exciting things happening in the LED world.

I started the process with a search for real LED-based fixtures, where the bulb is actually part of the fixture. The idea of putting an LED light and its electronics into a 120 year old Edison base, designed for a time when a bulb lasted a couple of hundred hours, seemed crazy. Surely there must be fixtures designed around the LED instead of just adapting the LED to the conventional lighting fixture.

And indeed there are, but they are few and far between, very expensive or very ugly. I went to a giant lighting supplier and found exactly one, at $500. IKEA, which is now almost all LED, had exactly one, the VIKT wall light, and it is strikingly ugly and useless, pointing light just up and down. Home Depot had exactly one, and it was horrible too. The fancy lighting showrooms have more of them, but they were all out of my price range. I needed a lot of lights.

In the end I concluded that we are in a weird, in between time when the designers and manufacturers have not caught up with the technology, and one has far more options mixing the LEDs with the Edison bases with existing fixture designs. We are just not at the real transition point yet, so I have gone for a transitional solution, buying the cheapest fixture in IKEA (and I mean cheap at $4.99). I must have bought two dozen of them. They will do the job for now.

Go bright.

IKEA is doing a lot of LED education to get people to "think Lumens, not Watts" and is not even publishing the watt equivalent in light output on its packaging anymore. It's not intuitive, and I made a few mistakes. I bought a lot of IKEA 400 lumen bulbs and that's really not a lot of light.

© Equivalent lumen comparison

I am much happier with the Philips Slimstyle bulbs that pump out 800 lumens, pretty much equivalent to an incandescent 60 watt bulb. (See Mike's coverage of it here) The difference in electrical consumption is trivial; the 400 lumen bulb uses 6.3 watts, the 800 uses 10.5.

Actually, the Philips bulb is an amazing thing. It looks like a cartoon, like someone stepped on a conventional bulb. It's all plastic, looks and feels light and cheap, but just pumps out those lumens and fits in any fixture. It has become the default bulb around the house and will be around for a while; It has an estimated life of 22.8 years with average use.

For the crystal chandelier that my wife recently inherited, I installed 90 lumen bulbs and it was a mistake; the fixture barely glows. (The wood ceiling doesn't help) I thought that six of them would add up to a reasonable amount of light but they will have to be replaced. Lesson: Go bright.

Go warm.

LEDs come in a number of color temperatures, which are based on the color given off by heated metal. Thanks to a century of incandescents and a few millennia of candles, most people seem to prefer what we call warmer light, which is in fact a cooler color temperature. When cooler is warmer it's hard to know what to buy, but look for the 2700K bulbs; my wife made me take out all the cool white 5000K Philips Slimstyles. In an earlier post I quoted a lighting company:

It is important to remember that indoor spaces lit to lower light levels will typically look and feel better under warm lamps, while higher light levels are easier to tolerate using cool lighting. A space which receives an abundance of sunlight may seem more natural when cooler lamps are installed since their light is closer to high colour temperature of natural daylight.

Go High CRI.

The Philips Slimstyle bulb has a Color Rendering Index of 80, which is pretty good but could be better; the light does not have the full-spectrum quality of an incandescent bulb but it is a lot better than the compact fluorescents that often had CRIs of 60. CRI is " the ability of a light source to accurately render all frequencies of its color spectrum when compared to a perfect reference light of a similar type (color temperature). It is rated on a scale from 1-100. The lower the CRI rating, the less accurately colors will be reproduced." The IKEA LEDARE bulbs have a CRI of 87, which is really terrific; that's almost full spectrum. I don't know why they bury this information because it is important. (here is a PDF I found)

It should be noted that there is some dispute about whether CRI actually works with LED bulbs. The UK Department of Energy has concluded that " CRI is generally not applicable to predict the color rendering rank order of a set of light sources when white LED light sources are involved in this set." - They are developing a new index to replace CRI, and suggest that you should pick a bulb because you like it; CRI "should not be used to make product selections in the absence of in-person and on-site evaluations."

The real LED lighting revolution will be RGB

Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

All of the cheaper LED bulbs are what is called Phosphor-converted (PC) LEDs, where, much like a fluorescent bulb, the output of the LED causes the whitish coating to fluoresce in a broader spectrum of light. It is in fact working just like a fluorescent bulb, with the solid state LED replacing the ionized mercury vapor. True RGB LEDs mix three colors together. They are a lot more expensive and not really necessary for basic lighting, but I had just purchased a classic bubble lamp, designed by George Nelson in 1950, and I really wanted to try out the Philips Hue bulbs.

© Philips

The Philips Hue starter kit comes with three bulbs and a "bridge" that connects to your wifi system. You control it with an app on your smart phone.

Lloyd Alter/ the bridge/CC BY 2.0

Setting it up is ridiculously easy; you plug the bridge into the router, download the app, and press the big blue button. It's a zigbee device, part of " a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh network standard targeted at wide development of long battery life devices in wireless control and monitoring applications." It talks to the bulbs and relays the conversation to your phone through the wifi system. Perhaps some day the bulbs will be actually connected to the internet, but right now they have to cross the bridge.

app on iphone/ I like sunset and Kathy/Screen capture

And what amazing control you have, up to 16 million colors that can be mixed and matched. Preset "scenes" that you can choose or you can make your own. You can set it on timers to change the color throughout the day, just like mother nature does, to reduce fatigue. I thought it would be a bit of a toy, but in fact it is just amazing. I find that I really do change the colors according to mood and the time of day, going more like sunset in the evening. Other developers have developed apps that let you turn it into a psychedelic light show. And if you don't want to use your phone as a controller, they do sell the Hue Tap, a light switch that still gives you a lot of control.

I also never anticipated how great they would look in a 65 year old design, with each bubble taking on a hue of its own. I bet George Nelson would have loved it. Having this kind of control changes the way you think about lighting, it is almost theatrical. I want them everywhere. I suspect that in a few years these will be as common as having lights on dimmer switches.

It's time to go LED

They are cheap, the light quality is excellent, they will probably outlast you, they use a tenth the electricity of an incandescent and did I say they were cheap? There is no reason not to dump the incandescents and the compact fluorescents now.