Recommended bright energy saving bulbs

[AliCh]

Hi - I have some Ikea 18W energy saving bayonet light bulbs which are good - they never blow, but they give a yellow light out.

Any recommendations for a good bayonet bright light - energy saving and good lifespan?

LED?

Thnx - Alex

 

[ericmark]

Bulbs are given a colour temperature mine are 2700K to 4000K the higher the number the whiter the light. Personally I have had some bad Ikea lamps so I keep clear of Ikea. But this is the point very hard to tell good from bad. In the main bad units either don't have the lumen per watt on packet or have a poor lumen per watt. Mine vary from 60 to 100 lumen per watt I would say for a bulb 70 is about the lowest limit. I think it's not so much the LED but the driver powering the LED which varies lamp to lamp you have good quality PWM and poor simple resistors or capacitors all lumped together near everything made in China and having a good well known name does not seem to mean it's a good lamp it just means you pay more.

So I go to Shops with good name rather than product with good name. So I got my BA22d lamps from Aldi, and my SES from Aldi and Lidi with GU10 from B&M bargains. I have TCP, Osram, OWIM, Livarno, Muller Licht and BG Electrical LED's in the house the latter is the only expensive one at £17.09 (24 watt tube) all seem to work well, but sorry non have run the 30,000 hours so can't say how good. Only the very cheap Pound World ITP GU 5.3 lamps have failed clearly I went too cheap with those.

 

[big-all]

these are really bright
http://www.toolstation.com/shop/p14618?table=no

 

[ericmark]

these are really bright
http://www.toolstation.com/shop/p14618?table=no

You are right that it's not just a case of getting an LED lamp. I got an 11W lamp from Aldi dimmable 806 lumen and 2700K which to me was a little too dim for the room works out at 73 lumen per watt. The one you link to is only 1W more but 1050 lumen so 87.5 lumen per watt, warm white is below 3000k so would be a little on reddish side likely same as one I bought. But also of course £3 v £6 not easy to decide if worth paying double for a little extra efficiency.

That to me is the whole problem with LED lighting. There are so many options likely the one I bought was less lumen per watt as dimmable? A 100 W tungsten bulb would have been 1750 lumen with a 60W being 870 so yes as you say a good output. Problem is direction the tungsten bulb shines mainly away from the base, but there was some light sent towards the base.The LED has no light sent towards the base so fitting used has a huge effect on how good the bulb is.

In my house the light fitting has the bulb with base at the bottom so all light is sent up to white ceiling the 10 x 3W bulbs therefore give a good spread of light. The same bulbs but with base upper would give out a different spread and also different amount of reflected light. My 24W 5 foot long LED tube can send light down only because it is so long I don't need reflected light. However at 2400 lumen v 5200 lumen with fluorescent tube more if using a HF ballast the LED is giving out less light than the fluorescent and compared with using a HF ballast around the same life (30,000 hours) the LED does give 100 lumen per watt where the fluorescent lumen per watt is variable 90 with a wire wound ballast but with HF around the same 100 lumen per watt.

I see a huge drive to LED but not convinced it's any better than fluorescent with HF ballast. Especially when a replacement tube is £4 v £18 it seems to me a money making exercise rather than an improvement. What does seem to happen is we tried hard to get fluorescent warmer so we tend to think less light where many of the LED lamps are colder so makes one think they are brighter. Until you try an read a book.

Both LED and fluorescent both lose output over time so replace and new bulb always seems brighter.

 

[big-all]

to be honest in general not really worth micromanaging light bulbs
just go with general suggestions and take it from there
when i first bought my led bulbs they where about £20 for a 4w corn bulb about 7 years ago
i was happy to pay those prices as it gave a constant electric price
in other words a constant year on price
now it cost about 20% for the same savings over what i paid so not worth so much micromanagement in use i look for constant rather than maximum
in otherwords its the overall savings at no effort rather micromanage to get maximum savings

 

[eveares]

I would recommend Kosnic as I am using them in my hall and I am happy with the results. I am using these in my hall.

See these links for bulbs in the various colour temperatures: 3000K 4000K 6500K Also see this and this for what different colour temperatures look like.

For something really bright, look for a led bulb in the >12w range.

Regards: Elliott

 

[AliCh]

Thanks everyone - very useful.

The colour chart for LED bulbs was good - I like 4000K. I would like a good bright light in my lounge and hallway.

As the LEDS seem to be measured in lumens now, what would 4000K be?

 

[JohnW2]

As the LEDS seem to be measured in lumens now, what would 4000K be?

Lumens are about 'brightness' and the colour temperature (e.g. 4000K) about colour. You could (within reason!) get any brightness (lumens) of 4000K lamp as you wanted - just as you could get an old-fashioned incandescent bulb in any size (hence brightness) from about 15W to 150W.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

There was a trick done which made LED's look brighter. The LED was over driven then switched off and on so the watts remained the same but the amps increased as watts is time based and amps are not. Not sure if it was to make LED look brighter or by product from switch mode regulation the net result was it foxed the human eye but not the lumen meter. As a result one would look at a 1000 lumen fluorescent and a 700 lumen LED and the LED seemed brighter.

My living room went from 3500 lumen to 2400 lumen when I swapped from compact fluorescent to LED yet the room looked brighter. However sit down to read a book and I now find I need a reading lamp but before I could read without one.

Buying a 5W LED finding not bright enough and moving that bulb to another location and replace it with a 7W works, as does the reverse finding 5W too bright and dropping to 3W. Where it all fails is where some one buys 30 bulbs to do the whole house working out exactly what was required but then finding the performance was not as expected.

So don't change any more than a room at a time. Remember the bigger physical size the bulb is the likely the better spread of light is. Avoid spot lights for general lighting. I have only bought one expensive LED light, it was a tube 5 foot long to replace an obsolete fluorescent tube, lucky it worked well but since old one was obsolete did not have much of an option. I try to keep cost per unit down, if I can use 2 x 3W rather than 1 x 7W then I will as they will give a better spread of light and cheaper to replace.

Using general and reading lamps is good not only to read with but also safety as likely sockets in a room are from a different RCD to lights so should a RCD trip one is not in total darkness.

 

[JohnW2]

There was a trick done which made LED's look brighter. The LED was over driven then switched off and on so the watts remained the same but the amps increased as watts is time based and amps are not. Not sure if it was to make LED look brighter or by product from switch mode regulation the net result was it foxed the human eye but not the lumen meter. As a result one would look at a 1000 lumen fluorescent and a 700 lumen LED and the LED seemed brighter.

Indeed so - but I suppose that is an indictment of an imperfect "lumen meter". As I'm sure you know, luminous flux (measured in lumens) is meant to take into account the perceptive ability of the human eye.[/QUOTE]

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

luminous flux (measured in lumens) is meant to take into account the perceptive ability of the human eye.

Yes it is meant to do that, but it still has to be measured by a machine. Also there seems to be more than one lumen those quoted for automotive lamps are measured after the lamp has been running for I think an hour but with other lamps there is no time limit. Also it can be measured per LED then multiply by number of LED's in the lamp or it can be measured for the whole lamp.

Like the miles per gallon rules it is rather open to abuse. I was reading a advert for a Vauxhall Car which gave miles per gallon of something like 222, but it seems the test is put one litre of fuel in the car see how far it goes then multiply to convert to gallons, but since battery was charged to start with and discharged at the end it added 40 odd miles to the total so if it does 48.8 miles with a litre of fuel then multiply by 4.5 and we get 222 but if we remove the 40 miles done by battery then multiply by 4.5 and then add the 40 miles back on with get 80 miles which is how far it will go with one gallon. It's not Vauxhall's fault the government has such daft rules for measuring miles per gallon.

It's the same with lumens the idea was good, but the result is rather useless. The rules have simply not kept up with technology, the building regulations still as 150 watt as maximum size of outside lamp without planning permission really it should be 2000 lumen rather than 150 watt.

Trying to find out how many lumen = 150 watt for a tungsten bulb it seems it depends on the voltage also it must vary person to person the colour of bulbs shown here

varies Upper left: fluorescent lamp, upper right: incandescent bulb, lower left: white LED, lower right: candle flame. So any one who can't see those bands of colour will see the lamp as giving out less light. Although we refer to Red - Green colour blindness it is often not complete blindness but a reduced perception of that colour. In other words every eye is different we can't classify an eye as f2.8 at 1/250 second ISO 100 as we do with a camera lens and sensor it is not really measured we see movement when really it is just a load of still images when watching a film or a load of lines when watching TV.

I have said this many times my living room had 3500 lumen of compact fluorescent lamps which were changed to 2500 lumen of LED lamps yet it looked brighter both to me and my wife. I am sure the LED lamps have since become dimmer.