nderwater said:The under-cabinet lights here are all halogen and really heat up the bottom shelf of the cabinets. I was thinking of replacing them with inexpensive long-strip LEDs but would love to hear if anyone has found better solutions.
The under counter led strip are awesome. Our cabinets had no lighting and these were easy to install and provide great light.
IMO, picking the right color for your bulbs is important for the look in your home. Warm or bright white?
For the can lights, check out retrofit kits. The less expensive ones are pretty close to the cost of replacement lamps. They basically look like replacement can trims, only with the led module and driver built in. These usually have better dimming control, are longer lasting, are more efficient, and make it look like you have new can lights. Spend a little more, and features like adjustable color temperature are available. Relaxing? Turn them down to 2700k. Working on a project? Tune them to 4000k. I’m not sure about the rest of the country, but residential lighting and replaceable lamps in CA are required to be 90CRI. Ironically, 90CRI is a bit less efficient than 80CRI, but the state didn’t want to repeat the way crappy quality CFL’s turned people off to them years ago.
You can’t directly compare lumens from a incandescent or fluorescent lighting to LED. Incandescent and fluorescent lighting relies on reflectors to get those lumens to where they are desired, and a lot of them go missing in the process. If you try to match lumen for lumen, you will end up with way too much light.
If you do buy replacement LED lamps, be sure to buy spares. The manufactures are constantly changing the designs, and it’s unlikely you will find a match if you need one in a couple years.
I picked up five boxes of GE 'daylight' LEDs (42 bulbs) from Low*s last night and started installing them... and my wife hated them, lol. The light they give is very stark compared to the warm 'soft white' bulbs currently throughout the house. We'll try again today with another batch of bulbs.
FWIW, the regular A19s BR30 bulbs came out to $1.20 each and the indoor floods were about $2.50. The big recessed cans inthis house have nice, expensive trims -- I don't have the patience or inclination to replace them all with retrofit kits at this time. We'll see if I feel the same way after trying out the replacements on the dimmers.
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