Dimmable LED GU10 lightbulbs

sep9001

sep9001

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Kev
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Hi

We are having our kitchen done and want to go via the LED route and have a few questions:

What are your thoughts on them?
Which ones did you get?
Are the bright enough?
Where did you get them from?
Did you have to get a special dimmable switch?

Thank you and sorry for so many questions.
 
I have recently replaced almost all my bulbs with LED's.
I got them from LED hut who seem to do 'special deals' every other week - 15% is common, 20% seens not too rare, so it might be worth ordering over the phone to negotiate a price if you do order from them.

I find that even 6w are not as bright as a 50w halogen, so would suggest 7w at least, or put in an extra light - they are all returnable but again, talk to them, and don't go for the cheaper/dimmer ones. I got a bunch of different ones going from the cheapest to some 7w that cost about £18.
As for a special dimmer - yes, you do need one, LED hut sell them for around £15 but they only drop the light to about half power, so not so much a dimmer as a half power switch.

The best part is that now I can have almost all the lights on downstairs in my house and still only be using slightly more power than with one old halogen bulb !
 
Thank you for your reply. I might have to go via the non dimming route. Will check with the OH. Which fittings did you use?
 
There is a lot of info on the LEDhut website. Good company to deal with. Quick to supply and reply to email promptly.
By coincidence I have LED striplights being delivered today - ordered last Sunday.
 
Thank you. Will check out their site.
 
stevewestern said:
and don't go for the cheaper/dimmer ones.
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I bought some from from a DIY store (two letters and an ampersand ;))
Seems they were on special offer, I know why now, they were crap.

I just went back to the normal ones, I'm all for saving power, but ......
I went back to the normal GU10's I'd rather be able to see what I am doing in the kitchen ;)
 
Cobra said:
I bought some from from a DIY store (two letters and an ampersand ;))
Seems they were on special offer, I know why now, they were crap.

I just went back to the normal ones, I'm all for saving power, but ......
I went back to the normal GU10's I'd rather be able to see what I am doing in the kitchen ;)
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Thanks. A mate has some Led need to go round and see how powerful they are else will have to go via the normal gu10 route.
 
If you're thinking purely of saving money don't bother with leds, they cost so much to buy they work out far more expensive over their lifetime than normal bulbs.
 
Care to explain that Hugh?
 
Very bad experience here from using LEDHut, I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole!
I had a 40%+ failure rate on their standard bayonet bulb replacements and but for Paypal I would have lost a packet as they refused to accept the returned failed bulbs.
If everything is okay you might be fine but if there is a problem they will deny everything.
 
Any idea how I work out how many I would need to cover a kitchen which would be about 6m by 5.5m?

Thanks
 
munch said:
Care to explain that Hugh?
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The money you will save in electricity bills is so small it could take 10 years or much more to recoup the purchase price of the bulb. There's plenty of info on t'web about the actual cost of led versus halogen and other bulbs.
 
All the lights in my house are LEDs and I prefer the Cool White rather than the Warm white. I have a few that are dimmable but really I don't think it's worth the trouble since they don't dim very much and I can't ever remember needing to dim them.

Interesting side affect of Led bulbs compared to Halogen is that you don't get the surplus heat from the bulbs anymore
 
For anyone who is confused by the 'equivalence' of energy saving bulbs, LEDs etc to traditional incandescent bulbs or halogens, you might have noticed that most bulbs now come marked in lumens as well as wattage which in theory allows you to compare the light output of different bulbs (as obviously different technologies etc will consume more/less for a given light output). Unfortunately few manufacturers actually bother to give a conversion table of lumens to traditional wattage so most people just end up being more confused (and it lets sellers market bulbs as stupidly bright 'equivalents' when their actually nowhere near the equivalent quoted figure).

Because of this I created the spreadsheet linked below a while ago which provides a graph that lets you convert between lumens and incandescent or halogen wattage and vice versa so e.g a 50W incandescent is about 600 lumens, a 375 lumen bulb is roughly the same as a 25W halogen or 37W incandescent etc. The data used for the graph come from the datasheets of various bulbs made by GE Lighting and I've found it to be fairly accurate in my perception (visually comparing light output).

https://www.opendrive.com/files?NF8zNDY2OTQ0Nl9tc1lzdQ

Hope some of you might find it useful.
 
That's good info Samuel.

Wattage is not meaningful with LEDs because the efficiency varies so much, and a good 3W unit could put out twice the light of a poor 6 watt job. We recently bought a bunch of 5W 330 lumen non-dimmable units from CPC Farnell at around £3.60 each for 10, and they're a good replacement for 35W halogens, brighter than 20W but less bright than 50W halogens. We also use Philips LED spots in some places because they are a little warmer and give better colours than these 3000K jobs, but they are expensive and less bright.

Another thing to watch for is beam angle and dispersion. We had some (expensive) units with 3 LEDs under a single plastic lens a couple of years back (same bulbs still for sale though) and they provided a central hotspot and very poor lighting for normal use. They also failed within 6 months, which wasn't good at all.

I've noticed Homebase are doing non-dimmable LED spots >300 lumens for a fiver each at the moment. Worth buying one or two if you're thinking about trying LEDs and want an idea of how well they work.
 
Plenty of contradictory evidence on the web about what works out cheaper.
 
If you look hard enough you'll find evidence in the internet that the moon is made of green cheese Munch.
It's simple arithmetic. In the average household a (kitchen for arguments sake) light bulb is used for a few minutes a day which adds up to pennies on a yearly fuel bill. If an led bulb costs £5 and saves you 50p a year it will take 10 years to pay for itself.
 
OTOH we spend a lot of time in our kitchen, so the lights are on around 6 hours/day in the week to 16 hours/day at weekends. According to this site that's about £14/month on 8*50w halogen bulbs (what we used to use) or £1.40/month on LEDs, based on 14.9p/kWh.
 
A good example of where it does work ^ and in an office where the lights are on all day it would work out cheaper too.

Using the calculator up there the 6x3w leds in my kitchen cost about 6p per month to run assuming about 20 hours use and they replaced a 30w fluorescent which cost 8p a month. Ignoring the price of the light fittings the led bulbs were £30 and a 6ft tube about a fiver, at 2p per month saving in electricity that's just over ten years before they start to pay for themselves.

There are many reasons for going with leds, in my case I wanted to get away from the fluorescent fly trap but didn't want to use Halogen bulbs. What I've said in this thread is don't make the choice of leds purely to save money, because you probably won't for a very long time.
 
Another factor in changing is that we are out in the sticks and electricity in our area fluctuates quite a bit, prematurely popping halogen lamps (when it's been bad, replacing 4 out of 8 in a month wasn't unusual). When LEDs were £15 each then Halogens were acceptable, but now they're <£5 and don't blow quickly the sums have swung in their favour.

Fluorescent light in a kitchen? No wonder you don't have the light on more than a few minutes! ;)
 
ancient_mariner said:
Another factor in changing is that we are out in the sticks and electricity in our area fluctuates quite a bit, prematurely popping halogen lamps (when it's been bad, replacing 4 out of 8 in a month wasn't unusual). When LEDs were £15 each then Halogens were acceptable, but now they're <£5 and don't blow quickly the sums have swung in their favour.

Fluorescent light in a kitchen? No wonder you don't have the light on more than a few minutes! ;)
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This is another good point about LED's that should be considered. We replaced around 80 halogen GU10's in a conference room at work with LED's. Previously we were regularly having to replace 3 or 4 blown lamps per week. In the 2 years since we changed to LED's I've not had to replace a single lamp.
 
Leslie said:
This is another good point about LED's that should be considered. We replaced around 80 halogen GU10's in a conference room at work with LED's. Previously we were regularly having to replace 3 or 4 blown lamps per week. In the 2 years since we changed to LED's I've not had to replace a single lamp.
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This is the reason I'm changing mine at home. I was forever having to change the low energy halogen lamps so I've gone down the LED route. Lasted a lot longer, so it's replacement cost as well as energy cost.
 
Try www.dp-led.co.uk . He supplied some bulbs for us at work , and so far so good . Before these we were having to change blown bulbs every couple of weeks . The boss bought some for his own house , as well as some of the flood lights from him . The guy has the flood lights around his house as well ( we have seen these. ) So not just selling products that he doesn't have faith in .
 
Best to look closely at the leds used. I bought a cheapy unit to replace an outside light and the face of the bulb is about 21 yellow leds. Fine when switched on but I don't think the yellow appearance would look good all over the ceiling, when off.

The regular Philips Leds I use look good on or off.
 
Get good quality named brands, I bought 6 bulbs from the ideal home show (or whatever it was at Excel) last year, so far 1x exploded, 1x failed & one now flashes like a disco. They have a 5 year warranty but you've got to pay to post them back for exchange :(

On the good side they give a good clear spread of bright light & use a shedload less power than the 6x60w halogens

On the bad side.... the kitchen is now cooler ;)
 
Avoid SMD LED-based units - output is usually low and with odd colour temperature.
 
SMD is just a packaging technology and in my experience most domestic LED bulbs use this type of device. It will have no affect on output or colour temp.
 
While I would agree with you in principle, what we think of as SMD LED lamp units - these - are lousy. And while more conventional lamps like these may also use surface mount technology, no-one thinks of them as SMD LED lamps.
 
Kev I get all my LEDs from here. (3W 'Day White' - which has a cool hue)

Cool as in colour, not as in 'yea man that's a cool hue'...:confused:

Anyways, I've had a few fail but they're fine for the money. :)
 
If you are buying new light fittings rather than just the bulbs then the best are Haler. (Made by Collingwood)

Not cheap but you can get serious discounts if you talk to the right person/distributor so far better value than the run of the mill ones in the big sheds.

We installed these in our bathrooms and bedroom when Operation Refit took place last year. Amazing bit of kit
 
PS a lot of LEDs are not dimmable and whilst you can dim them from the light switch, all you do is shorten their life.

Check they are dimmable.

Also, for a kitchen what kind of light do you want - cool white will give you a more clinical/crisp look whereas warm white will be a softer/less intense style of lighting.
 
Thank you. I have decided to go for non dimmable ones now. Not decided on the color yet. Please can I have a link to the haler one you bought.
 
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