Considering changing lounge and dining room lighting to LED

[cerclebois]

Currently each room's switch is an elderly dimmer. The principle light fitting in the lounge has 5 lamps, each with 40 w. small golf balls. The dining room has a similar fitting with 3 lamps.
I'm considering a change to LED both for the ultimate savings and convenience of less frequent need for replacements.

I realise the dimmers have to be changed, but that done, may I safely mix the old bulbs with new LEDs until the former have failed? Is that worth doing? What rating dimmer is needed for each room?

 

[ericmark]

Yes you can mix, I also used globe bulbs, I could not find a LED at a reasonable price in that format, so I used candle LED bulbs which as a set look OK but as a mixture looked a bit odd, so I changed the living room first then used the bulbs from living room for dinning room.

I had a number of moves, start was two 100W bulbs, then six 40 or 60W bulbs then ten 8W CFL globe bulbs and then ten 3W LED candle and finally ten 5W returning to globe bulbs.

I have found that both watts and lumen don't seem to work, with the 30W of LED room looked bright, but hard to read a book needed ten bulbs for mothers house with smaller room, so put my 30W collection in mothers house and went to 50W in mine. In the dining room I don't need the extra light so 6 x 3W is ample.

So I would consider doing one room at a time, so you can see how well it works. I got my LED bulbs from Lidi and HomeBargains all were cheap, I got the first batch of CFL bulbs from a lighting supplier all Philips which did not last, so replaced with HomeBargains CFL which lasted a lot better, so have decided cheap bulbs are better. I have not had a single 230 volt LED bulb fail.

 

[Taylortwocities]

If you want to dim your LEDs, then you must buy dimmable ones. Cheapo LED bulbs from Lidl, Tesco, etc are usually not dimmable.
It's usually written on the box by the tell-tale phrase "Not Dimmable".

 

[cerclebois]

I was aware the bulbs had to be the dimmable type, but thanks! The suggestion about doing each room in turn is helpful. My concerns are mix-and-match, and the ratings of the dimmer switches I'll need

 

[AdrianUK]

The colour temperature of LEDs & filaments lamps tend to be very different ... if you mix them in the same fitting then crisp white of the LED tends to make the filament lamps look very yellow & a bit odd.

The LEDs tend to have a very different dimming curve to filament lamps & even between LEDs from different manufactures. This can also look odd when the LEDs seem to be a lot brighter than the filament lamp when dimmed down and aren't uniform to each other.

When investigating using LEDs for our lounge chandelier (7 x 40W candles) I tried several brands of LED (Supermarket, DIY shed & Branded). I found that the lower end ones do dim but only down to around 15-20%, whereas the better, branded ones would dim all the way to off. Again, different brands would 'snap-on' at different level at a different dimmer setting - looked very odd. We did even end up with the situation that, below around 20% on the dimmer, 3 of LED candles lit up & the other 4 remained dark!

 

[Notch7]

I had LAP candle LEDs 1 stoped working and screwfix no longer sold them.

I then sourced philips candle filament LEDs, they are a much better colour, same 2,700K but whiter than the LAPs which have a weird green tone.

The latest dimmers have trailing and leading edge options -I got some from screwfix that dim without flickering down to almost nothing.

 

[AdrianUK]

I had LAP candle LEDs 1 stoped working and screwfix no longer sold them.

I then sourced philips candle filament LEDs, they are a much better colour, same 2,700K but whiter than the LAPs which have a weird green tone.

The latest dimmers have trailing and leading edge options -I got some from screwfix that dim without flickering down to almost nothing.

I agree, I eventually settled on Philips LED candles driven from VARILIGHT V-PRO dimmers