I Can See Clearly Now

[billroper]

I took the two six-packs of 60W equivalent Cree LED bulbs down to the basement and installed 11 of the bulbs, replacing most of the remaining incandescent bulbs down there. The net result is that things are much brighter, because I've been using the GE Reveal bulbs for years, as they have good color reproduction, but a lower lumen output. The 60W Reveal bulbs put out 630 lumens. The 60W equivalent Cree LED bulbs put out 800 lumens, so they're a bit more than 25% brighter. This turns out to be pretty noticeable.

I still have a fair number of CFL bulbs scattered around the house, but -- with the exception of one basement fixture that will take a stepladder to reach and the chandelier in the living room -- I've pretty much exterminated all of the incandescent bulbs that aren't in lamps or bathrooms.

And I have enough incandescent bulbs for the bathrooms to wait it out for a while until the vanity-style LED bulbs get cheaper than $10 each. :)

Comments

[madfilkentist]

That leaves me more confused than ever about what those "watt equivalent" numbers mean.

[kizoku42.livejournal.com]

Looked it up online and found
40-watt incandescent bulb = 450 lumens
60-watt incandescent bulb = 800 lumens
100-watt incandescent bulb = 1600 lumens

So, the Reveal bulb is even more inefficient than your normal incandescent bulb.

[billroper]

Yes, they are. They had a neodymium filter for better color reproduction than standard incandescent bulbs, but that reduces the light output (apparently by about 25%) from a standard bulb.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

I have made a note of that brand, to see if I can find it here in Mississippi. I should probably start at Lowe's.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

I don't expect it will be the same brand, but they DO have both 60-W and 75-w equivalent bulbs, according to the phone call I just made. So I will stop in there next time I am in Starkville.

[billroper]

The Cree bulbs are only at Home Depot. From what I understand, they have one of the best reputations for price/performance among LED bulb makers.

Philips is also doing well, as nearly as I can tell.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

There's only a Lowe's in Starkville; nearest Home Depot is Columbus, I think. Or maybe Tupelo.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Much better than the Kree bulbs, which are part of a sinister plot to take over the galaxy.

Or the Krell bulbs, which keep dimming, then brightening, then dimming, then brightening....

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Light bulbs, like car license plates and the design of US currency, are in too much flux for me to keep careful track of what is current (no pun intended).

I shake my head in confusion over light bulbs.

K.

Have you a Costco nearby?

[jslove.livejournal.com]

I buy pretty much all our LED light-bulb replacements at Costco. I can get a three-pack for $9.99, or the huge-bulbed vanity lights in a three-pack for not more than $12.

The prices there are less than half. sometimes less than a third, of what I see at the local Home Depot, Lowe's or even BJ's. Thank you Costco. I don't know how they do it, given BJ's is also a warehouse store........

It's nice that these things come with ratings in lumens, but they are always dimmer than the specs on the incandescents they ostensibly replace. And I can't find 100-watt equivalents except in spotlights.

The LEDs I have seen don't come with ratings for color fidelity, like fluorescents do. Instead of the relatively flat curve of sunlight, or the similar curve from incandescents, they have a skinny blue spike and a much broader hump centered on yellow. They look white, and they are brighter, but I figure things must look different even though my color memory is not typically good enough to figure out how.

Comparing the colors of the different kinds of fluorescent bulbs is easier (daylight, cool, warm, grow: turned on, side-by-side, for me) than figuring out how it makes colors of objects different. Using the bright orange (mercury vapor?) lights in turnpike rest area parking lots, it is easy to see how things look different. A can of Coca Cola looks black (the red) and orange (the silver/white parts), or if I am misremembering it, at least it looks totally different than under white light. But I don't (for example) put on makeup, where more subtle differences in rendering could become clown-like.