Goodbye 40-watt and 60-watt light bulbs! (United States)

What will happen to all the slow lighting, yellowy, twisty bulbs? I had one in a lamp that I've since replaced with a much better led. It's now in the bubble bag waiting to be recycled.
I got a free energy efficiency kit from my electric co. Couple LED bulbs, a twist style, and three led night lights. It was part of some kind of tax subsidy or something.
 
One thing that concerns me is people talk about the wattage equivalency of incandescent vs. LED bulbs, but seem to forget about keeping the lumens constant. I've seen 40-watt "equivalent" LED bulbs that have variously (1) 300 lumens or (2) 450 lumens. A 150 percent difference is too much variation for my comfort. Also, if we are replacing high-lumen with lower-lumen bulbs, we are not really achieving "equivalence."
 
silva said:
What will happen to all the slow lighting, yellowy, twisty bulbs? I had one in a lamp that I've since replaced with a much better led. It's now in the bubble bag waiting to be recycled.
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I'd say, if it still works, do use it in some place where it does not matter much that it lights up slowly and is yellow-ish. It will still save energy over a conventional bulb, especially above one of a lower wattage where it will provide similar or better light.
 
Joe said:
I've seen 40-watt "equivalent" LED bulbs that have variously (1) 300 lumens or (2) 450 lumens. A 150 percent difference is too much variation for my comfort.
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That's actually a +50 % / -33 % difference (depending on which direction you calculate from).

And if you replace a 40 watt bulb with either a 5 watt or a 7 watt LED bulb, it is indeed different, but it will be savings nevertheless.

What I do, is I check the bulbs in question and try to get the ones with 450 lumens, if the price is the same .... so I have ordered, in the past, a batch of 5 or 6 different energy saving bulbs to compare and then select the ones I want to use in my apartment.... I have now a chandelier with 5 different brands of LED bulbs in my living room, some of which are better/brighter than others and will be the ones I buy when I need to replace some. Luckily, they are not very much different from each other and the effect is not very visible.

There are other issues as well, some LED bulbs can have a "frequency" (they flicker, especially if the current is not high enough), and the colours can be quite different. Also, the life expectancy might be different - so in these cases I like shops like Amazon that have reviews for the different products.
 
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Joe said:
It's also unclear to me what sort of bulbs are better for outdoor use--like porch lights.
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If you're leaving your porch lights on all night or when you go out then this is pretty poor from an energy efficiency/global waming standpoint. Rather wasteful in my opinion. Of course, there is a security issue but I think that could be more in your mind, but it depends where you live. I only turn out the porch lights when I know someone is coming home soon, or for the 5 0r 10 minutes when we get home and are unloading the car.

If you are going to leave the light on all night for instance then LEDs would pay for their purchase cost within maybe a year or two in energy savings, while being greener.

However in practice they may not be available to fit your socket, and if they are they may not have the brightness output you're used to.

I have put LEDs in all the sockets that are used for more than 2 hours a day. I still have many incandescents type ones (half or more) left in all the sockets that get occassional use like the bathroom where the energy savings going to LED would be minimal anyway. I also have these wierd sockets where it's hard to find LEDs that even fit the sockets.
 
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Joe said:
One thing that concerns me is people talk about the wattage equivalency of incandescent vs. LED bulbs, but seem to forget about keeping the lumens constant. I've seen 40-watt "equivalent" LED bulbs that have variously (1) 300 lumens or (2) 450 lumens. A 150 percent difference is too much variation for my comfort. Also, if we are replacing high-lumen with lower-lumen bulbs, we are not really achieving "equivalence."
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A very good point. Do not trust LED bulbs that claim to be 40W or 60W equivalent (ie equivalent light output to a 40 or 60W incandecscent), as it's very often not true. I have literally statistically proven this as part of my job on a sample of over 1000 lamps. It was extremely common for those bulbs advertised as 60W equivalent to in fact be more light a 40W equivalent or in between.

So ignore the statements about equivalence and just look at the lumens - you want about 600 lumens for a 40W equivalent or 900 lumens for a 60W equivalent. The examples you gave are sadly typical, and hardware and supermarket stores are full of useless dim LED bulbs which will likely put people off for years to come even though LEDs are getting better with time.

Genuine 100W replacements with LED did not even exist a few years ago, and for technical reasons, have tended to be more expensive per lumen (i.e a true 100W equivalent LED would be more than 100/60 x the price of a true 60W equivalent).

A genuine 100W equivalent LED today would be about 1400 lumens. That does exist, but it's rare.

My advice on that is to if necessary try and consider if you can accept an 800-900 lumen LED where you previously had a 100W. Of course, it will be dimmer but it's energy savings.

You have to learn to check the lumens. Rule number 1 about buying LED.
 
Filament bulbs went nuts a few years ago (maybe 2014-2016). They are actually quite rare in the residential market but they are used in bars and restaurants etc where they are uber fashionable.

If you were in a decent-sized, trendy, high end bar in London, Tokyo or Seoul that had gone through an internal styling redesign recently and it didn't have filament LED, that would be more noticeable than if it did!
 
The lumens will normally be written on the packet or in the online description - at least most of the time. If it's not, consider not buying it and choosing another one.

To be clear you can't trust the claims of 40W/60W equivalence but you (probably) can trust the lumens written on the packet.

900 lumens from an LED will not be precisely equivalent to 900 lumens from an incandescent but it will be close enough. So if the packet says 900 lumens you can reasonably expect a similar light output to a 60W incandescent.
 
Jamie in Chile said:
If you're leaving your porch lights on all night or when you go out then this is pretty poor from an energy efficiency/global waming standpoint. Rather wasteful in my opinion. Of course, there is a security issue but I think that could be more in your mind, but it depends where you live. I only turn out the porch lights when I know someone is coming home soon, or for the 5 0r 10 minutes when we get home and are unloading the car.

...
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No, I don't leave my porch lights on all night. That was not my concern.

My concern was that outdoor temperatures (particularly in wintertime with below-freezing temperatures) might damage a compact fluorescent (by causing the glass to crack) where an incandescent or LED would not be affected. Plus, almost all the bulbs in my outdoor fixtures are difficult to change. So, what type of bulb is most suitable is puzzling to me.
 
My supermarket has a half-price sale on colored LED bulbs. Who would want a colored LED and what for? There is nothing on the packaging stating the possible uses for , say, a pink LED.
 
There are LED bulbs that you can change to any colour you like, even remote and with "patterns".

"Mood Lights". But those are not cheap, if I remember correctly.
 
I see those color changing leds on sale on discount sites a lot! I've never known anyone to use them

They make both compact flourescent and LED bulbs for cold outdoor temps. I had a compact flourescent in my garage and outside my door. It gets below zero here and they're fine
 
silva said:
They make both compact flourescent and LED bulbs for cold outdoor temps. I had a compact flourescent in my garage and outside my door. It gets below zero here and they're fine
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I am sorry, but I don't understand what you are saying here. Do you mean: (1) any compact fluorescent bulb or LED is made to withstand cold weather, so just pick any one off the store shelf, or (2) there are special lines of compact fluorescents and LEDs made specifically to withstand cold weather--buy one of these "special" bulbs for cold weather use ?
 
Assuming we're talking of temperatures around zero C or -5C then I think most LED and perhaps most fluorescent also should be fine.

I am not too sure about this. I think some lights have specific temperature ratings but I think it's also true to say that most of both do OK in cold weather in general.

If you live in a place where it gets -20C at night every winter you might need to do your own research.
 
Andy_T said:
That's actually a +50 % / -33 % difference (depending on which direction you calculate from).
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Thanks for correcting this. I should have said 50 percent. (Apparently there is a time limit during which one can edit one's own posts. That time limit has apparently expired.)
 

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