Philips hue bulbs in recessed downlight fittungs

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Hello

I was looking to fit philips hue ambience white E27 bulbs to my existing E27 kitchen down light fittings which are recessed. There are 10 in total.

However the standard advice from philips seems to be that these bulbs should not be used in "closed" fixtures.

The problem is that they don't stock any other bulbs which might be compatible for recessed fittings.

Does anyone know the reasons why this might not be a good idea and if there are any suitable alternatives? I like the idea of being able to dim the lights and change between cool and warm white, ideally using LED bulbs.

Thanks

Scott
 
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Dimming switches often have no neutral connected, so there has to be a leak resistor in the lamp to allow enough current to flow to work the dimming switch, this in turn means the lamp gets warm.

I use an 8W CFL in my old freezer to maintain the temperature at 20°C when making home brew, even when the garage is at zero the 8W CFL is enough to maintain 20°C in fact even 5W would be enough, one reason why you should close curtains before putting the light on, light hitting a curtain is turned into heat, light hitting a window is energy escaping.

So reason is the lamp will get too hot.
 
It does not state size of lamp, however I seem to remember my son looking at these, the power needs to be supplied to the lights at all times, and each lamp uses power be it switched on or off, I seem to remember around 0.5W so they use this all the time, so with 10 that's 5W so 43.8 kWh per year even when not being used.
 
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They usually mean enclosed as in a small lantern or a bulkhead fitting, it was similar with CFL lamps and also electronic starters, mainly due to the heat affecting the electronic components.
 
Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for everyone's input.

Finally got round to buying some of the hue bulbs to try out (e27 ambience bulbs).

I'm hoping it should be ok with fitting these bulbs in the fittings shown in the attached photos? The bulbs will still have a few mm gap to allow heat to escape and they are not completely enclosed.

Also re: energy consumption of 10 of these bulbs on standby. If 0.5w x 10 bulbs I figure that only works out at about £6-£7 per year in total extra assuming I kept all 10 bulbs on standby 24/7 all year. I think I pay about 15p per kwh. That's not too bad.

Cheers
 

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It does not state size of lamp, however I seem to remember my son looking at these, the power needs to be supplied to the lights at all times, and each lamp uses power be it switched on or off
Utter, utter madness.

What kind of idiot designs something like that, and what kind of idiots buy it?

Some people do not have enough sense to be allowed to make decisions.
 
You don't have to keep the main light switch on all the time, which we won't anyway.

Reason for going down this route is to allow us to have greater flexibility of using the lights which will improve their versatility and probably reduce overall running costs.

We can switch between cool white (when cooking or using the laptop) and warm white (when eating or having people over). Our kitchen doubles as a dinning room and office at times.

We can select only 1 or 2 of the bulbs (preset 'scenes' allow this in hue) to light up, as opposed to all 10 at the same time, when we only want minimal lighting. We can obviously dim each bulb as preferred as well.

It will work over a bit extra in initial costs, although not as much as you think when you think of savings on not having to buy a new dimmer switch and electrician to fit it.
 

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