LED Light Bulbs
Just two years ago I wrote how LED light bulbs vs CFL light bulbs were exciting but still “a wash”. My how tech changes. Over the last couple months, I’ve been replacing my 23 watt CFLs with 9.5 watt LEDs and getting the same lumens! My LED bulbs look terrific, last forever, and will pay for themselves in less than two years. If they were replacing incandescent bulbs, they’d pay for themselves in twDONE!
I’m using Feit Electric Conserv-Energy 60 watt replacement dimmable bulbs. Feit item# 144799. Available at my Costco for $10.50 for 3.
They don’t flicker. I’ve put them on my new Lutron Maestro dimmers and they dim very nicely down to a very low level (but I also had to put a regular 40 watt incandescent in with them lest the dimming circuit doesn’t work correctly).
I haven’t been able to use them in a torchiere lamp with a built-in dimmer. If the light is set to dim and some appliance in the house turns on, the light turns off for a split second :-( The incandescent bulb only flutters a little and is much more tolerable.
I’ve had really good luck with the cree bulbs you can get at home depot. They work great on touch dimmer circuits, which are kind of iffy with non incandescent bulbs.
I don’t know what the heck is up with those torchiere lights. They seem to have more problems with heat and interference than any other style of light that I’ve ever seen. Frankly, every single example that I’ve encountered has had some kind of weirdness with their dimmers. Even if you’re using the three way incandescent bulbs they were originally designed for.
I hear you about the weird torchieres. The one I described has pretty good circuitry in it but it was built well before there were LEDs and their more fickle power regulation issues. We have another one that has “high” and “low” settings; with incandescent or LED bulbs, the low setting has an insane flicker and the high a barely noticeable flicker. Blah.