Easy Green Living: Upgrade to LED light bulbs

About a year ago, I got excited when I learned that Home Depot would be selling an LED light bulb for "just" $20.  Keep in mind that they used to cost $75-$100, so this was a pretty staggering price cut.  I had already done my part in getting rid of pretty much every incandescent light bulb in my house and replacing them with CFL bulbs.  But I'm not too happy with CFLs due to three reasons:

1. They take a while to "warm up" and get to full light output. This one really makes them fail the wife approval factor.
2. Difficult to dim to very low light levels (the CFLs that support dimmers require a minimal amount of power to keep the gas in the bulb in a state that causing it to emit the light, meaning you cannot dim them very much)
3. They contain mercury gas: bad for the environment, and a minor toxic mess if you happen to crack the bulb

The Home Depot brand of LED bulbs that seem to be most reasonably priced are called EcoSmart, and they are available in the standard bulb style, and the flood light style.  I decided to give them a try, since Home Depot has a good return policy.  My fear was that they would be too dim to be reasonable replacements.  Here are my impressions:

A19, 9 Watt bulb

A19 standard style bulb, 9 Watts: ($17) This bulb does not have strong light output.  It is comparable to a 40 Watt bulb, which is low considering most reading lamps have a 60 Watt bulb.  Also, the light is not very evenly dispersed in all directions like a typical incandescent or twisty CFL bulb.  It seem that the light is mostly being emitted straight up, and not much gets diffused to the sides.  Overall, not a good choice for a reading lamp, but I ended up using a pair of these in my bathroom's recessed cans because they are bright enough, and have a more diffused light pattern than the LED flood light bulb. I would recommend spending the extra money and getting the stronger 13 Watt A19 bulb instead (which didn't exist when I was purchasing these).  I bet the 13 Watt one would be great for something like recessed cans.

PAR30, 15 Watt bulb

PAR30 flood light bulb, 15 Watts: ($47) 725 lumens of output comparable to a 60 Watt bulb?  Now we're talking!  I like this bulb a lot and have put it in my living room's recessed lighting cans.  The light color is a neutral white, not as cool as a CFL, not as warm/yellow as an incandescent, just a nice pure white.  It does indeed turn on to full brightness instantly (well, there is maybe a 0.5 second delay for it to fire on, but it goes straight to full bright), and works with a standard dimmer.  I can dim these way down to the point of barely on, so lots of flexibility.  It does seem to be as bright as the 75 Watt halogen flood light bulbs we had in there previously.  The only criticism I have is that the light is rather focused like a narrow spot beam flood light.  I actually like that style of beam, but it may bother those who are used to incandescent flood lights which are very diffuse.  The more diffuse A19 style bulb in the 13 Watt flavor may be a better choice, but I haven't tried that one (yet).

PAR20, 8 Watt bulb

PAR20 flood light bulb, 8 Watts: ($22) The PAR30 bulb was actually too spotty in terms of the beam pattern for my bedroom and bathroom, so I ended up using these for my bedroom recessed cans. Like the PAR30 bulbs, these also have a pretty focused spot beam pattern.  For my bathroom, I put a pair of these PAR20 bulbs above the floor, and a pair of the A19 bulbs above the vanity because the A19 bulb has a more diffuse light pattern, and the spot beam was not working over the vanity where the light only travels half the distance from the ceiling recessed can to the vanity countertop, and thus the focused beam really look like a spot light.  If I had to do it all over again, I would probably use that A19 13 Watt bulb for the places where I want to tone down the brightness a tad below the PAR30 15 Watt flood light.  The A19 bulb should be more diffuse, and the specs indicate that it is fairly bright.

These are the only bulbs I ended up getting, but there are other EcoSmart LED bulb options out there, such as an 18 Watt PAR38 flood light and 24 Watt PAR38 flood light.

Currently, I'm on a quest to find an LED lighting solution for my kitchen's recessed cans, which current use those 4 pin CFL tubes that I was required to use due to city code. The biggest gripe I have is the warm up time, plus I'm not a fan of the cool color that CFLs give off.  I may decide to replace the recessed cans with the standard screw type fixture so that I can take advantage of the growing number of LED bulb options.  The current EcoSmart flood light bulbs aren't going to be acceptable because their beam pattern is just too spotty for a kitchen, which needs fairly even lighting on all the counter tops.   I'll be sure to write about it if I do find something suitable.