Long Term Review - Home LED bulbs (Indoor and Outdoor)

zespectre

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
May 21, 2005
Messages
2,197
Location
Lost in NY
The Oldest LED bulbs in my house are three of the Philips 12 watt (60W equivalent) A19 bulbs purchased and installed in the "high cycle" areas of my home where they get turned on, run for brief periods, and turned off, very frequently. Specifically two in the stairwell (which is hard to change), and one in a sheltered entrance area in the garage (also hard location to reach). These bulbs were purchased in 2011 for a fair amount of money and have been in reliable service ever since. The stairwell lights have had the usual household conditions. The one in the garage entrance has been subject to full outdoor temperature from -10F to about 95F as well as high humidity (though no direct moisture). I would estimate the indoor lights have 4,000-5,000 hours on the clock and roughly 15,000 cycles. The garage light has a lot less time turned on and a lower cycle count.

The next oldest bulb is a Sylvania 78641 (detailed in this thread) that is mounted, completely exposed, on a post at the side of my house and has faced the full brunt of all weather and temperature since it was installed in 2012. As detailed in the thread, this was apparently not actually supposed to be a full "outdoor" bulb, but it has continued to work fine and has lost very little, if any, brightness. This light is hooked to a timer and is on roughly 4 hours each night automatically and sometimes longer if we need it for some reason and override the timer so I would estimate that this light has about 8,000 hours on the clock.

In 2015 I replaced the rest of the outdoor yard/floodlights (3 more of them) with Sylvania 1,200 Lumen floods providing far more light at significantly reduced electrical cost (from 120 watts per light down to 14 watts)

As of 1/1/2018, the rest of the house is now fully LED excepting the specialized applications like refrigerator, oven, dryer, workshop large area fluorescents, and a bathroom heat lamp.

The remaining bulbs (39 at last count) were replaced between late 2013 and now (1/1/2018) mostly as the various incandescent bulbs blew, and are a mixture of Utilitech (Lowes), Feit, and a few General Electric ranging in brightness from 650 Lumens to the 4,000 lumen monsters (two of them) mounted overhead in the garage. We have had 6 failures with the Utilitech lights. All of these failures were within a few weeks to a year of installation by the date I wrote on the bulb base. As the Utilitech lights failed I replaced them with FEIT bulbs of similar capability. I have had one GE bulb fail due to an old lamp socket that was bad and providing poor electrical contacts. Bulb and lamp were replaced and have functioned without issue since. I have had two FEIT failures, one due to being knocked over more than once by our rampaging dogs, and the other just an apparent failure/manufacturing defect which FEIT replaced free under their warranty. These bulbs have from a few hundred hours all the way to roughly 8,500 hours on the clock and the "dusk to dawn" light in the front lamp post is well past 11,000 hours (it's one of the FEIT "60 watt" 800 Lumen bulbs).

In summary

1) Even the roughest of calculations indicates a decent total electricity savings.
2) Utilitech bulbs are cheap... and they are cheap. Get something better.
3) Two of the bulbs in my workshop are more expensive High CRI ones by Philips. If you are doing any kind of hobby/craft work I recommend the High CRI bulbs because it does make a difference.
4) If you have a favorite lamp that is 20+ years old. Do yourself a favor and replace the light socket before you start using LED. There's a reason your old incandescents kept blowing out in that lamp (LOL).

LED for home lighting has come of age. Buy decent bulbs and you may never have to climb a ladder to replace a light again.
 

frank70

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Sep 19, 2011
Messages
69
I had bought 4 of the 12W Philips alien head bulbs, and 9 of the 8W (40W equiv) Philips alien head bulbs back between 2010 and 2012. Except for the one 12 bulb that failed recently, they're all still going strong. Four of the 8W bulbs are in a linear vanity fixture in my bathroom and have been on at least 3-4 hours a day since installed (in typical bathroom extreme variations in humidity).

In addition, I bought 7 of the Philips L-Prize bulbs back when the orange store was closing them out for something like $12 each. They're also still going strong including the 3 in my kitchen ceiling fixture which easily get 4 or more hours use every day. The rest are in reading lamps (due to their high CRI) that don't get nearly as much use (so I know when the kitchen bulbs eventually die, I have 4 backups).

I've been virtually 100% LED lighting for several years now (except for Christmas time when the C7s and C9s still come out). The 10W (760 lumen) GE Bright Stiks are crazy great refrigerator bulbs!

The only outdoor bulbs I have are two 14W Sylvania Ultra LED Floods (1050 lumens, 3000K) in a motion-sensor fixture. They're heavy and seem extremely well made, but have only been in service about 3 years, so time will tell.
 
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