The reduction in cost of LED lighting is surprising. An item of anecdata from my experience.

My house is somebody else's self-build - a nearly finished "reduce a bungalow to trhee walls and a hole in the ground, and rebuild as a house with 150% extra space" done in 2008-2012 to rather better than building regs, but not near-passive, standard. It was 2013 and they ran out of getting their money back so left some things undone.

He had a bit of an obsession with ceiling spots, and when we moved in there were 19 in the kitchen, and a total of 63 50W halogen GU10s in the house. I replaced them all with the new £4 Ikea ones as the first thing I did - ie the cost was about £250. It paid for itself in about 2 years.

Now 12 years later, most of my Ikea LED GU10 lights have yellowed, and maybe a dozen have gone pop, so I am replacing all the rest.

The "Trade Rated" pack of 50 in the LAP brand I picked up from Screwfix (949YY) yesterday came in at £32.

How things change. Time will tell if I bought a pup.

Very cheap. Well spotted.

Though 345 lumen is a bit tight on light output.

For all the progress, I have yet to find the perfect GU10 - 800 lumen+, dimmable, 60deg, CCT remotely controllable, CRI>90.

I wonder where we would be had they not banned people from using the old ones.

On 24/10/2026 at 11:06, Ferdinand said:

Now 12 years later, most of my Ikea LED GU10 lights have yellowed, and maybe a dozen have gone pop, so I am replacing all the rest.

We massively overpaid for downlights when we built 11 years ago. I got a bit obsessed with light quality, so we paid a lot more than we really should have, especially given that many cheap LED downlights today probably measure as well as what we paid through the nose for back then. We should have bought decent fixtures with replaceable bulbs, then replaced the bulbs with better versions over time as they deteriorated or failed.

The only upside is that we've had only one failure in that whole time. It's somewhere where it isn't particularly visible, so I haven't bothered checking what's actually failed - it could be the driver, which I can replace easily enough.

My biggest LED challenge remains extracting bulbs from the couple of spotlight fittings that have them recessed, especially when balanced on steps.

The usual technique is rubber gloves, but I also have about 6 of those rubber sucker things mislaid in different unknown places. These are what Mr Rumsfeld used to call "known unknowns".

I don't do dimming, other than in my bonce !

I was emailing an "obsessed" gent yesterday from another forum. Like me he has shifted to wet shaving with a traditional safety razor with blades at 10-20p each, rather than pay £££ for 3, 4 or 6 blade slivers set in plastic. When Gillette moved their Russian Razor Blade factory to China, he went down the rabbit hole because of quality, and bought enough razor blades to last him for this life and the next.

He sent me some "spares", and this turns out to be enough to last me about a decade at dozens per annum.

I am sure that when build-hubbers pop our clogs, our sheds or store cupboards will be found to contain 3-lifetime supplies of something, bought in packs of 10x or 20x because the unit price was 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4 of the single item.

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

I was emailing an "obsessed" gent yesterday from another forum. Like me he has shifted to wet shaving with a traditional safety razor with blades at 10-20p each, rather than pay £££ for 3, 4 or 6 blade slivers set in plastic. When Gillette moved their Russian Razor Blade factory to China, he went down the rabbit hole because of quality, and bought enough razor blades to last him for this life and the next.

He sent me some "spares", and this turns out to be enough to last me about a decade at dozens per annum.

I went down the same rabbit hole 20 years ago and still have the Merkur razor I bought back then. I tried various blades at the time (although never got around to trying the famously too sharp "Feather" blades), eventually settling on the cost/sharpness compromise offered by Derby. I buy in bulk, but I have adult children who get through them at a prolific rate when they're home.

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

I am sure that when build-hubbers pop our clogs, our sheds or store cupboards will be found to contain 3-lifetime supplies of something, bought in packs of 10x or 20x because the unit price was 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4 of the single item.

Several years ago I decided to get a paper towel dispenser for the garage. I thought it'd be really useful, so bought a large box of 12x refills, because it was cheaper to buy in bulk. I'm about halfway through the first refill - at this rate, my unborn grandchildren will still be using them long after I've gone.

Did the same with special Italian flour when we got a pizza oven.

And pH test strips when I got curious about the pH of my compost and soil.

It's a sickness.

On 24/10/2026 at 20:02, Spinny said:

Very cheap. Well spotted.

Though 345 lumen is a bit tight on light output.

For all the progress, I have yet to find the perfect GU10 - 800 lumen+, dimmable, 60deg, CCT remotely controllable, CRI>90.

I wonder where we would be had they not banned people from using the old ones.

I think the average energy consumption of a UK house would NOT have fallen by 20% between 2010 and 2024, as happened (if I recall the published figures correctly).

3 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

I was emailing an "obsessed" gent yesterday from another forum. Like me he has shifted to wet shaving with a traditional safety razor with blades at 10-20p each, rather than pay £££ for 3, 4 or 6 blade slivers set in plastic. When Gillette moved their Russian Razor Blade factory to China, he went down the rabbit hole because of quality, and bought enough razor blades to last him for this life and the next.

Does he have a recomendation for a decent shaving foam? I've used up my dad's supply of original recipe Erasmic (Tallow based - I inherited 6 tubs) and their new stuff is beyond useless...

2 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

I think the average energy consumption of a UK house would NOT have fallen by 20% between 2010 and 2024, as happened (if I recall the published figures correctly).

OK, so you are saying people left to themselves would have chosen to continue using traditional bulbs/halogen/tungsten etc because their own judgement would be that the benefits to them of having brighter bulbs exceeded the additonal energy costs.