I previously wrote about the fancy, expensive LED light I got for the important living space of the master bedroom closet. I said that I wanted to go LED as much as possible in the house. This is still true.
Prior to the house becoming mine, in my dreaming and planning periods, I wanted to replace all the recessed lighting with LED equivalents. But, prior to actually designing that out (because you have to determine what type of cans are installed), a sale came up on Meh.com for LED bulbs. I bit.
Tonight it’s storming outside, so I can’t go out and get my ladder. That means I can’t change out any bulbs in my living room or bedroom. But I can change out the bulbs on the lanai – the future office.
I’d done this room once before, when CFL was the hot newness. I had a pair of mismatched bulbs, of different wattages and different color temps. It was really stupid. And for all the claimed benefits of CFL, I tried to shrug off the warm-up delay they all suffered. Well, I’ve kind of had enough of it. Instant-on LED is where it’s at.
Before starting, I measured the old lights. The two old bulbs registered this brightness on my phone’s app:
According to the app, it was like a cloudy day in my office. After quickly installing the LED bulbs, the readings changed dramatically:
Not a bad upgrade if I say so myself. (The extra light in the first reading was spillover from the kitchen, which says just how poor the old bulb really was.) For comparison, this new light level is the same as my office at work. The office where the “kids” complain about how bright it is all the time and how they want half the lights turned off so they can work. Damn vampires.
I then changed out the bulbs in the hallway and entryway and despite the change from a 75W incandescent to 65W LED, the brightness change from the lower wattage was hardly noticeable at all. And since these bulbs are all the same batch and model, the color temperature is going to be consistent throughout the house, which is nice.