Frustrations trying to move over to LED lighting

[MJNewton]

My wife and I seem to be quite picky when it comes to lighting - too picky perhaps given the issues we're having...

 

Our house is 95% lit by incandescent bulbs ('standard' and some halogen) and most rooms have dimmers. I am midway through building an extension to create an open-plan 'family room' consisting of kitchen, dining and lounge areas within which there will be fair amount of lighting. Sources include ceiling downlights, pendants and floor lamps.

 

This seems to be the perfect time to move over to LED lighting, at least for the family room, and so we have been experimenting with different bulbs with extremely disappointing results. The main issue seems to be with the colour rendition (many seemingly giving things a green tinge, particularly our ginger cat who looks positively ill under a lot of them!) and disappointing performance when dimmed. We've only tried 2700K bulbs, on the assumption that this would get us the closest to what we're used to.

 

We thought Philips would be a good bet, and was attracted by their 'dim tone' range which aim to emulate the warming of tungsten bulbs when dimmer (dropping from 2700K to 2200K), but they've been a real disappointment - the light they gave looked terrible. We also tried another bulb from them with a >90 CRI which was okay, but still not particularly pleasing. The best we've found are the Ikea Ledare range - high CRI (>90), warming function when dimming, good light and relatively cheap. The only downside is they seem to be discontinuing them as various bulbs from the range have gone through a 'Last Chance' phase on their website before now completely disappearing.

 

Can anyone help? Perhaps we are just so used to the colour and colour rendering of incandescent bulbs that we just need a bit of time to adjust to LED? A bit like swapping from HD to SD sources on the TV; looks terrible on first transition but you gradually get used to it and it ends up looking okay. Or could it be our obsession with dimmers and that dimmable LEDs are limiting/eliminating our choice of good bulbs?

Edited February 2, 2020 by MJNewton

[Ferdinand]

Dye the cat ?

 

I swapped all mine over in 2013, and tbh I have not noticed any problems - except that I have had to swap out single  hanging fittings for new ones with several LED bulbs as I seem to notice dim light. It may be that I am not sensitive to the tone.

 

I swapped mainly GU10s to the then Ikea LED bulbs, and I still have a quantity of compact fluorescent bulbs still going strong.

 

 

Edited February 2, 2020 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

We prefer the whiter daylight colour.  Forget the big brands, go to Screwfix and buy a few different colours and try them, Then when you find one you like but a job lot.

 

I could never go back to the energy wasting of filament bulbs now.  If I put every light in the house on, it's still only about 200W

[Dreadnaught]

I have embraced the Philips Hue smart lighting, especially the "white ambient" bulbs.

Pricey I know but the "temperature" of the white light is tuneable.

[MJNewton]

It's not so much the colour temperature that we've had issue with but more the colour rendering...

 

Interesting about the 'big brands' aspect though and maybe we should pick a few random offerings and see how they fare. Afterall, I wouldn't necessarily have expected Ikea bulbs to be such good performers.

[AliG]

We have Collingwood downlight which I am quite pleased with and seem reasonably priced.

 

The dimming thing is an issue, most of the LEDs seem to barely change until they suddenly dim when they are almost switched off, but my wife hates lights being dimmed for some reason so it is not an issue for us.

 

Another issue is fittings where the bulbs cannot be changed. I tried to avoid these as much as possible. We have one ceiling light in a room that is like this and sure enough it has already gone after less than two years and will need replaced. Also one of around 22 identical wall lights has failed, luckily I can buy more of the same fitting. But the wall lights are £50 each and the ceiling light was I think around £200. Maybe this is another area where regulations can help, light fittings where you cannot just replace the bulb should be banned as they are enormously wasteful.

 

As to the colour issue, I think you may just have to get used to it. If we started with LEDs and changed to incandescent people would probably complain that they made everything look orange/yellow.

Edited February 3, 2020 by AliG

[Temp]

We've noticed quite a variation in colour even between supposedly similar LED bulbs from the same manufacturer. Have just got used to things appearing slightly different when we change bulbs. It's mainly annoying when one of a set goes because invariably the identical bulbs are no longer available so the odd ones are more noticeable. Our kitchen  currently has about three different bulbs in all slightly different colours or beam angles.

 

If you experience flicker when dimming a fitting with multiple LED bulbs then changing to a dimmer designed for LED can help a  lot.

 

23 minutes ago, AliG said:

The dimming thing is an issue, most of the LEDs seem to barely change until they suddenly dim when they are almost switched off,

 

I recently purchased a dimmer that claimed to have programmable end stops but despite several attempts its still far from ideal. For the first 45 degrees nothing, then it comes on a bit too bright, keep turning and for some reason they flash off and on again once just before reaching full brightness. Guess I'll keep looking for a better one.  

[Oldsteel]

LEDs are great, they cost next to nothing to run and as regards CRI, colour temp and dimming are improving all the time. But - we are just completing the lighting schedule for our new build and its now a lot more complicated than it used to be. We have spent hours poring through websites, the OH chooses based on design and I look at the specs. There are tens of thousands of LED fittings available, and you now have to look at whether they are integrated, dimmable, low or mains voltage, wattage, lumens, whether they need a transformer, is that transformer dimmable, will it only work with specific dimmers, is the dimmer training edge, colour temp and CRI (which often isn't quoted on the spec) - it goes on!  There is a huge disparity on prices as well, for instance you can spend £8 or £108 on a pretty standard downlighter and price is not necessarily an indication of better quality.

It seems there is no substitute (other than employing a lighting designer at vast cost) for putting in hours of planning up front to make sure it will all work together successfully. We have made a rule up front for 3000k colour temp everywhere which simplifies things a little. Our current house is all LED, albeit different hues and brightnesses but as long as each room is consistent it probably doesn't matter too much. We don't have any dimmers .......

[Adsibob]

On 02/02/2020 at 22:27, MJNewton said:

It's not so much the colour temperature that we've had issue with but more the colour rendering...

 

Interesting about the 'big brands' aspect though and maybe we should pick a few random offerings and see how they fare. Afterall, I wouldn't necessarily have expected Ikea bulbs to be such good performers.

I'm interested in this. Have you found any data on colour rendering index of Philips Hue bulbs? Or angle of Philips Hue bulbs. Doesn't seem to be any data on it.

[Adsibob]

On 02/02/2020 at 21:00, MJNewton said:

My wife and I seem to be quite picky when it comes to lighting - too picky perhaps given the issues we're having...

 

Our house is 95% lit by incandescent bulbs ('standard' and some halogen) and most rooms have dimmers. I am midway through building an extension to create an open-plan 'family room' consisting of kitchen, dining and lounge areas within which there will be fair amount of lighting. Sources include ceiling downlights, pendants and floor lamps.

 

This seems to be the perfect time to move over to LED lighting, at least for the family room, and so we have been experimenting with different bulbs with extremely disappointing results. The main issue seems to be with the colour rendition (many seemingly giving things a green tinge, particularly our ginger cat who looks positively ill under a lot of them!) and disappointing performance when dimmed. We've only tried 2700K bulbs, on the assumption that this would get us the closest to what we're used to.

 

We thought Philips would be a good bet, and was attracted by their 'dim tone' range which aim to emulate the warming of tungsten bulbs when dimmer (dropping from 2700K to 2200K), but they've been a real disappointment - the light they gave looked terrible. We also tried another bulb from them with a >90 CRI which was okay, but still not particularly pleasing. The best we've found are the Ikea Ledare range - high CRI (>90), warming function when dimming, good light and relatively cheap. The only downside is they seem to be discontinuing them as various bulbs from the range have gone through a 'Last Chance' phase on their website before now completely disappearing.

 

Can anyone help? Perhaps we are just so used to the colour and colour rendering of incandescent bulbs that we just need a bit of time to adjust to LED? A bit like swapping from HD to SD sources on the TV; looks terrible on first transition but you gradually get used to it and it ends up looking okay. Or could it be our obsession with dimmers and that dimmable LEDs are limiting/eliminating our choice of good bulbs?

Obviously I'm posting more than 2 years after your original post, but in case you are still in the market for bulbs, you can get CRI 95 bulbs fairly cheaply now. I've been experimenting with these and they seem pretty close to incandescent:

https://www.mygreenlighting.co.uk/replacement_bulbs/spot_bulbs/gu10_bulbs/14802.html

 

[MJNewton]

On 10/04/2022 at 20:58, Adsibob said:

Obviously I'm posting more than 2 years after your original post, but in case you are still in the market for bulbs, you can get CRI 95 bulbs fairly cheaply now. I've been experimenting with these and they seem pretty close to incandescent:

https://www.mygreenlighting.co.uk/replacement_bulbs/spot_bulbs/gu10_bulbs/14802.html

 

Thanks for that, always on the look out for new bulbs. I ended up going with some dim-to-warm CRI95 GU10s from ‘well lit’ and they’ve been superb but you’d expect so at £13 a go! (These are similar but I’m sure mine are 6W versions, not the 9W as per the link) They give a 365 day money back guarantee so I figured I had nothing to lose but straight away I knew they were exactly what we were after. If they don’t last beyond the 3yr guarantee I doubt I’d be comfortable replacing them like-for-like given the cost so will save your link (Edit: I see Amazon have got them for £4.16 with free delivery).

 

Re Hue bulb specs I must admit I didn’t go too far researching as I never expected wanting too many smart bulbs and if I did I didn’t fancy the costs which soon add up (he says having spent £13 on one (well, five!) and generally preferred the idea of using ‘dumb’ bulbs with separate smart controls that I could replace/upgrade if/as required.

Edited April 11, 2022 by MJNewton

[BobAJob]

We use the cool white LEDs. They provide nice bright light and make a big change from the warm regular bulbs we used to use.  

 

I even swapped out our florescent tube in the utility room for an LED version. No more blinking before it comes on. Now it's instance bright light and it was cheap too. 

[Adsibob]

2 hours ago, MJNewton said:

I ended up going with some dim-to-warm CRI95 GU10s from ‘well lit’ and they’ve been superb but you’d expect so at £13 a go! (These are similar but I’m sure mine are 6W versions, not the 9W as per the link) They give a 365 day money back guarantee so I figured I had nothing to lose but straight away I knew they were exactly what we were after.

The difference is that for the price jump, one gets an extra 100 lumens per bulb, whilst still staying true to the 95 cri which is v. impressive… but pricy!