Home interior LED lighting

What is a good source for to replace my lightbulbs in the home with LED lightbulbs? I seen some places selling them but haven't ran accross any reviews on which ones are the best.


GeoScouter

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

check out what i did to my home



5500°K Kitchen lights wide angle 120°b using 10W instead of 300W (my oven even has an led night light)



previous crappy incan bulbs



8000°K spotlight for fireplace and TV Room (bonus room)

Great room lights using 2W instead of 240W



crappy incan



bonus room 6 lights total 3W draw instead of 360W



kick *** blue LED night lights with variable thermistor on/off sensor



recent addition

1.4w ea Type B candle lamp from ikea (my sister got the lamps and i was forced to make them look cool)



my neighbors think im crazy

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

oh yeah maybe i should tell you where i got them haha

the led bulbs i got them from eBay, sellers are vivian690ng

http://search.ebay.ca/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZvivian690ng

she/he/them are selling the 8000K spotlights

william6.trade

http://search.ebay.ca/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZwilliam6Q2etrade

is selling wide angle 120° 5500K lights (these are slightly green actaully) he also has the 40-60° spotlight bulbs too

avalible bulb types on ebay are MR16, GU10, Par20, Par30, Par38 (rare but ive seen them) regular Type A, and some other bulb cant remember

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

Very cool. I'm looking for some white LED bulbs to replace some 60W and 100W teardrop incandenscents around the house. What is recommended?

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

regular A bulbs are hard to replace with LED's because LED's are really more designed to go into track lighting and not something like a dome light. you can always replace your dome lights and get track lights, its very easy to change them out, only 3 wires (black, white, bare gnd)

the wide angle 120° will *work* in a dome light but will be a little too dim unless you have 4 of them

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

pr5owner said:

regular A bulbs are hard to replace with LED's because LED's are really more designed to go into track lighting and not something like a dome light. you can always replace your dome lights and get track lights, its very easy to change them out, only 3 wires (black, white, bare gnd)

the wide angle 120° will *work* in a dome light but will be a little too dim unless you have 4 of them

Click to expand...

What is in the track that helps LEDs? Resistance? Don't they make screw in LED bulbs with built in resistors?

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?product=MR16&cart_id=4197839.24318
http://store.advancedmart.com/11acand12vdc.html
http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-household-light-bulbs/index.aspx

LED bulbs have a very high colour temperature. They tend towards blue-white or purple-white instead of warm white of normal household bulbs. (They do sell warm white LED bulbs in Europe but 240V bulb into 110V supply no workee). The warm white luxeons at superbrightleds.and the sun dusk at Ccrane seem to be the only ones available in the USA.

They are dim. Current LED bulbs run around 25 to 50 lumens. A 60 watt bulb is 900 lumens. Not good for general room lighting. To get around this use tracklight/spot LED bulbs to light up items of interest - stereo system, front of dresser etc. and let the rest of the room go dark. There should be enough spill light to not trip over the furniture.

For general room lighting try compact flouresent bulbs.
Ikea 4W 120 lumens = 10W
Ikea 7W 280 lumens = 20W
Spiral 9W 500 lumens = 40W
Spiral 13W 900 lumens = 60W
Spiral 23W 1500 lumens = 100W
They use more power than the nominal wattage rating of the bulb but will still cut the lighting part of your power bill in half.

.I used LED lights in the summer in my desk lamp and my bedside lamp to stay cool. Summer's over and I'm back to the 4/7W Ikeas.
I have
23W in kitchen.
13W in bedroom/hallway
2x9W in bathroom

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

pr5owner said:

check out what i did to my home

Click to expand...

Thats really neat! I been house hunting and I like the track lighting you have. I may have to do that.

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

LEDninja said:

They are dim. Current LED bulbs run around 25 to 50 lumens. A 60 watt bulb is 900 lumens. Not good for general room lighting.

Click to expand...

I didn't realize there was that much of a lumen difference between them and regular bulbs. I checked out some of those links. They are still pricy. I may have to get one just to try out. Place one at my desk and see how it works out.



GeoScouter

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

www.ledeffects.com has some LED bulbs, but the whites are all 5000K, it seems, and I'm not sure of the lumens. Thos ones with hundres of LED's all around I'm sure are bright, but look at the prices.
I don't see any incandescent colored bulbs, but I know they have the LED's, because I saw them in their office what I went asking about the DingDotz. They look pretty nice, like real incandescents, and just as bright. The arrays I saw were basically rows of LED's (that you could use to illuminate a wall, for instance), rather than bulbs.

Ledtronics also has LED bulbs, of both types of white.

I also just discovered that the LED A-19 bulbs used on the new Stillwell Ave (Coney Island, NYC) subway terminal (the spire and around one of the entrances) that looked incandescent are really combinations of pure white and amber LED's, to simulate incandescent color. One had the glass broken completely off, and it is a flat array of 4 white in the middle, surrounded by 8 ambers. They look like a 25 watt bulb up close, but appear a dim, dull orange (closer to high pressure sodium color) in the night. I don't know who makes those,. but they wuld not be very bright even for a room.

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

Thanks for the suggestion I really hate fluorescents though.

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

I know this sounds like a crazy question...but are these bulbs dimmable?

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

IIRC LED track lighting can be dimmed. A question I have is: are the medium based screw bulbs the same as medium base etc? looks like some are thinner than others. the more i think i know about lights the more i need to know .. 120v sounds like house current in USA............................ what about 110 v a/c???
I swore i would not buy anoter N cell LED light; but that $6.95 light they have looks cool not to have as a flashaholic.
I have seen LED based screw in bulbs ( I am typing by the light of one right now) and they are not inexpensive around $20 IIRC from elite led. I dont think im ready to hook up track lighting myself electric shock etc etc.

Re: LED lightbulbs for the home.

BamZipPow said:

I know this sounds like a crazy question...but are these bulbs dimmable?

Click to expand...

Not recommended according to the ledmuseum.
http://ledmuseum.candlepower.us/fifth/1wbulb-1.htm
***VERY IMPORTANT!!!*** DO NOT under any circumstances use this bulb in a fixture equipped with a dimmer switch, whether the dimmer is in the fixture itself or on the wall controlling that fixture. The bulb will overheat and fail if this is done. You don't want rats or flies...I mean...you don't want an unwanted fire.

The caution regarding using a dimmer is pretty much generic for any LED product powered by 110-130 volts AC; not just this bulb. Using this or any other 110-130 volts (or for that matter, 220-240 volts for viewers outside North America) AC LED product can result in overheating, failure, and possible fire because the AC waveform is altered by the circuitry in the dimmer, and AC line-powered LED products not using a step-down transformer tend to not do well with the altered AC waveform.

Led Home Lighting Applications

I dont have a lot of technical knowledge but I would like to do a track lighting type scenario using LED lights. I have found the berkley point company that sells the microstar and accesories that seems to be ideal for my project but I want to know if anyone has expierence or knowledge of this type of project...Thanks!

Re: Led Home Lighting Applications

Can't help you with track lighting....though when I release my driver boards the might be useful. Have you considered bunker lighting? Check out www.rgbsunset.com. I should have prototype moulded housings next week (I hope) for the long boards.
The chips can also be incoorporated into some electronics....as mentioned I don't have driver boards as yet though.
Would you regard track lighting as more appealing than bunker lights?
Phil

Re: Led Home Lighting Applications

I have a post listing all the home LED lighting threads I found here.
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1319109&postcount=3
2nd post in the 1st thread is probably the most interesting in your case. Lots of pictures.
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1165126&postcount=2

Recently I started to knock together some colored interior LED lights to light my room (student's room near my university) at night. Power supplies are all from the Italian company VLM ( www.vlm.it ), LEDs are all Luxeons, heatsinks are taken from old computers. This is the result :

Cyan mood light

• 1 cyan Luxeon I LED (lambertian/high dome) bin Q2H
• Host looks like an ice cube and is bought at Ikea
• LED driven at 350 mA
• Heatsink : a piece of a Zalman VGA cooler heatsink
• Picture : http://img138.imageshack.us/my.php?image=a2555na.jpg (too bad my camera can't capture the very nice cyan color of this light)

Blue mood light

• 1 blue Luxeon III LED (lambertian/high dome) unknown bin
• Host looks like a sand blasted ball on a wooden base, bought at a local DIY store
• LED driven at 350 mA
• Heatsink : a piece of aluminum
• Picture : http://img138.imageshack.us/my.php?image=a2569vf.jpg (color is very lovely deep blue, maybe it's lower wavelength because it's an underdriven LuxIII? Don't know for sure. By the way, if you look good you can see a Fenix L2P in the beer glass)

Red mood light

• 3 red Luxeon I LEDs (batwing/low dome) unknown bin
• Host is a tower of glass pieces I found on the attic
• LEDs driven at 350 mA each
• Heatsink : heatsink of a MSI VGA-card
• Picture : http://img138.imageshack.us/my.php?image=a2575xt.jpg (the tower of glass pieces projects nice patterns on the ceiling)

Although the red light has 3 LEDs inside, I would still say it's the least visible of the 3 lamps. Cyan is best visible, then blue and then red.

All together these lights give a very nice background lighting for my room. The advantage of using LEDs is that all colors are very pure, colored incandescent lights have dull tints and look ugly compared to these LED lights.

This is the picture of my room with all 3 lamps on : http://img239.imageshack.us/my.php?image=a2582xi.jpg On the left on the wardrobe is the red lamp, still on the left but on the bookshelf is the blue lamp, and on the right on my cd-cabinet is the cyan lamp. They give a very attractive atmosphere to my room I haven't heard a bad word of it so far (except for people sitting in the garden who look at my window, say my room looks like a brothel from the outside ).

Next on my schedule : ZLED RGB-LEDs. This can take some time because I will have exams in 3 weeks.

See ya!

Re: Interior LED lighting

Oh no man, your gonna start a fad. It's gonna be like the pet rock or hoola hoops. :laughing: That looks very cool. Now I have to decorate my house.

Thank you for the pictures, that is very cool, Erasmus. Look the nice work you did. The LED seems like it's emerging like crazy. If you haven't heard of this group, you might be interested to know about Color Kinetics www.colorkinetics.com, a lighting company in Boston. They are lighting up casino's in Las Vegas and they also provided the lighting systems for the "Deal or No Deal" game show studio on NBC, using LEDs only and big-time color, too.