The room does not seem as bright… is it the bulbs or these old eyes?
Did you know… Googled"
“Do LED lamps dim with age?”
Thankfully LED lights last much longer than the old incandescent bulbs. And even after many hours of lighting, an LED lamp does not simply burn out. Instead, an LED ages with time and its luminosity slowly decreases . This effect is known as degradation or decrease in luminous flux.
In my experience, they do simply burn out. They may also dim before they burn out, but I have a box full of LED bulbs that simply quit one day.
I’m not really sure that’s true either. It certainly wasn’t for compact fluorescent bulbs, but that was the lie they had to tell us to make them seem cost-effective in the long run. My aforementioned box of LED bulbs would suggest they don’t last all that much longer, but I admit I never saved incandescent bulbs for recycling, so I don’t really know.
I run an office building and replacing lights is a major thing I do. The life of LED bulbs has been VERY disappointing. Good T-10 fluorescent tubes have lasted over 10 years, but I rarely get an LED that lasts over two years.
Plus the fact that when they are no longer giving light they still draw power.
LEDs have been oversold. Glad I did not convert my fluorescent tubes to them.
I meant T-8 bulbs with electronic ballast. T-10 bulbs with old-fashioned ballasts are not as long lasting, but still beat LEDs
I’ve had mixed results with interior LED lamps. Color is often too harsh and not warm enough for my tastes. And I have a shower recess lamp that flickers.
But for exterior use I have found that the LED motion-detecting floodlights and small self-contained sunset-to-sunrise candelabra base lamps eliminate the need for my old motion detectors and timer switches which were always a pain for time zone and season changes.
You can get a switch that keeps track of such things automatically. Put in your Zip code, and it knows when dusk and dawn occur. You can then program it to do certain things relative to those times (or relative to clock time). And I’m not talking about a smart switch that connects to your wi-fi (a smart switch should also include those features).
That doesn’t help you now, but maybe this information will help someone.
I had time zone driven “automatic” ones after replacing my original 2012 vintage timer switches. The problem with them (Sylvania I think) was that two of them blew out from power surges.
The motion sensor floodlights operate manually or automatically with standard wall switches. The dusk-to-dawn lamps just work automatically, but that’s not usually a problem for a 25-watt porch light.
If you figure out what temperature of light you prefer, you should be able to find it in LED bulbs. Or you can use smart bulbs where the light colour is adjustable. Personally I prefer 5000k lighting for most places, but depending on the specific requirements of a fixture, it can change. 2700k is soft white, and looks very yellow to me. I find it difficult to see clearly and distinctly with yellow lighting. Above 5000k the light can become quite blue.
Dimming has been the most disappointing part of LED for me. In reality, incandescent and fluorescent bulbs dim too, but not to the same degree. I spent a long time searching for LEDs with warm light and high CRI values. They look fantastic at first, but they seem to lose a good chunk of brightness in the first month or so and then a much slower drop off after that. I haven’t measured it with a light meter, but that seems to happen in my experience. As far as longevity. I had to replace one bulb in the past 6 years. So mine have held up just fine and we have our lights on quite a lot because of the dimness of our house.
I’ve never really noticed my LED bulbs dimming, and certainly not that rapidly. I’m not sure if i have any non-LED bulbs left except in heat lamps I use for young chicks. I even changed out the light under the microwave that illuminates the stove top to a much brighter LED.
I will say most of mine are WiZ smart bulbs, usually full colour, although most are set to 5000k white. Front porch and landscape lights i change colour by the season. And some fixtures have a shade that affects the colour, and I modify the degrees k to what i find attractive.
Perhaps it’s the brand of bulb youre using? Or the fixture? I recall a post from a year or three ago about something in the wiring of fixtures that could cause dimming or premature burnout…
I have LEDs almost 100% around my house. One lamp has been on for the past to 3 years to provide some light in the middle of the house for safety reasons. I agree that some of the LEDs do lose brightness over time. But my outdoor lights are all led. So I don’t have to climb up on a ladder to change them. You don’t notice color changes that much on outdoor lights. They’re not there to read under but to provide a safe environment. I actually have led lights for my Edison bulbs on my patio. They draw a percentage of a what and are so inexpensive to run sometimes they stay on 24 hours.
I have LED lights outside are Honetwell Dusk to Dawn with photocells. They were on deep-discount at Costco of course. They look industrial, green hood and LEDs facing down and can mount on a pipe or wall.
I use (I think they are FEIT brand) dimmable and color-changing LEDs throughout the house. The bathroom overhead at night gets set to red, which is dim and is used as a nightlight. It is not bright enough to keep me awake, yet bright enough to see without any other light, thus keeping from fully waking me up.
They are all on Alexa and some are time-controlled.
Most LEDs here at Costco are heavily discounted by the electric company to perhaps 1/3 or less of the list price. Hawaii is agressively pushing to be energy independant sooner than most states.
Henrius, you and butler might want to check out this article:
I have four chandeliers, each with five bulbs. I bought forty LEDS, figuring twenty to install and twenty more to replace those over time. That was years ago, and the original twenty are still working fine.
The diff? I bought forty “enclosure rated” bulbs.
For what it’s worth, my fav store for bulbs is Batteries+Bulbs. I told them about the short life problem I had with bulbs from Home Depot and Wal-Mart. They said those vendors use LEDs bought at cheap prices. They claimed the Duracell LEDs they sell last much longer. So far, they have. I have not had one go bad in a year. Yes, they cost more, but I have a corporate account at Batteries+Bulbs that gets me cheaper prices.