I picked up a Cree 60W Equivalent LED bulb at Home Depot this morning for $8 (MA utilities are subsidizing them about $4), gotta say very impressed with them compared to any CFL I've used. Instant on, and good color.
The VT utilities are being much more generous, and the same bulb only cost $5 there...

Is it weird to be excited about a light bulb?

Not at all. I really like those bulbs myself, and have about 5 of them in my home.

I still think the color could be better, but IMO it's good enough. There's one room on my house that only has these bulbs, and the color temp is fine.

Best of all, the Cree bulbs are dimmable, so they work with [most] of my home automation system. They'll work with any of my lamp modules, but my light switches won't work with them unless the switch ties into the neutral line (I have cheaper ZWave switches).

Which version of the bulb did you get? I remember picking up a bulb with a different color label, and ended up hating the color of that one (much too blue and cold). But now I can't remember which color is which.

I'd also like to pick up their bulbs for recessed lights. It could get pretty expensive to replace all of those in my home, but I'm curious how well they'd do, considering how much more exposed they are than most lamp bulbs.

It has taken a long, long time for 'white' LED color fidelity to creep from terrible to merely poor to almost acceptable to now almost good enough.

CRI values and 'Kelvin' color temperatures are still quite variable across different products and manufacturer/brands.

I look forward to the day when the last CFL bulb is retired from my house and white LED becomes the norm.

I recently installed around 100 feet of self-adhesive LED flexible strip lighting under kitchen cabinets and inside several closets. The 'warm white' color fidelity is good enough that I am overall quite happy with the light quality.

They are only subsidizing the Soft White (2700k), the Daylight White (5000k) bulbs of the same "wattage" are $14. The VT stores also have the BR30 Flood Light Bulb for $19.97 ($10 subsidy), and we have 5 of them in the kitchen with cold white CFLs, but as we are currently renting it is hard to justify replacing them. At least with the regular light bulbs I know we can use them when we move.

I was only planning on picking up one to see how they were, I'd heard others speak well of them. Now I have a friend from VT picking up $100 worth of them, some 40w, some 60w.

K447: Where did you get the LED flexible strip lighting?

Lee Valley

I mostly used the 120 LED per meter tape, for which the 8 foot 'kit' was somewhat cost effective.

I suspect I could have found similar product elsewhere for less cost but the calibre of the product itself and the Lee Valley support has value to me.

I have also purchased LED products directly from China and Hong Kong and the documentation and actual LED light quality (CRI and color temperature) do vary. It can be difficult to determine how closely the actual product will conform to the web site descriptions.

I may have a use for this LED side emitting tape in specific locations. Will the color temperature match my existing LED tape lighting? Hard to say...

I'm at home depot right now, and apparently they now have three varieties: daylight, warm white, and soft white. I think the bulbs I preferred were the soft white variety...

Thanks K447- hopefully I remember this when I need it.

With LED bulbs, don't pay attention to the wording. One vendor's "warm white" and another's might be quite different. The three numbers that matter are color temperature, color quality, and lumens.

Yee olde halogen bulbs are 2700K and 100CRI. More on lumens in a moment.

The higher the color temperature, the more blue the bulb. 2700K is obviously desirable but costs more than 3000K. Similarly, the lower the CRI, the more jagged the color spectrum of the light. This manifests itself in textiles appearing weird colors, since the color dyes are typically selected for halogen or daylight conditions. A CRI of 80 or more seems to be acceptable. Very expensive LED bulbs are in the mid 90's.

Lumens turns out to be annoyingly complex, and phrases like "60W-equivalent" are often stunningly wrong. A good site to browse / get lost / get enlightened is LED Benchmark. They measure all kinds of other interesting things, like flicker, and they give you comparisons to measurements from old-school halogen bulbs as well. Highly recommended.

EDIT: fixed busted URL for LED Benchmark.

Dan, I wasn't comparing the terminology of different companies, I was naming the three labels from Cree.

I wouldn't go with labels or even numbers. I buy a bulb and see what it's like. The great thing about the Cree bulbs is that they're finally cheap enough to buy just to test them (although Home Depot has a great return policy).

Dan, great website, loads of info.

Unfortunately my friend won't be able to set me up with some bulbs from HD in VT, so I'll just have to settle with a few at time at $8 a pop.

I will say that the cheap Cree A19 (standard Edison socket) bulbs that you can get at Home Depot are remarkably high quality. Perhaps more importantly, they look normal. I bought a bunch of the earlier Philips LED bulbs, which have great light quality but look like something from an alien starship. Sometimes, you'd rather not have your bulbs calling attention to themselves.

That's a very important point. With some of these bulbs, you simply can't put them in certain lamps because they won't even broadcast the light in the proper directions. The Cree bulbs cast light in pretty much every direction normal bulbs do.

One downside I have with the Cree bulbs, though, is the weird rubbery coating. It's not that I dislike it, it's just that it seems to grab onto every dust particle in the air

I don't seem to be able to find the operating conditions for these bulbs, specifically the ambient air temperature requirements.

Will they work at -40C, eg. in Canada?

And how hot will they tolerate without dramatically reduced lifespan, eg. inside an enclosed "jam jar" style of fixture?

Lots of docs on their site http://www.cree.com/Lighting/Document-Library but in a quick check I didn't find what you are seeking. You could try asking them http://www.cree.com/News-and-Events/Social-Media

I just installed a Cree flood light (BR30) -- the packaging states "Suitable for use in operating environments ranging between -25C and +45C. Lifetime may be reduced if used in air tight enclosures or in insulated ceiling air tight (ICAT) recessed down light enclosures." Other bulbs may have different ratings...


Other bulbs I saw when I picked this up, specifically said on their packaging "not for use in enclosed fixtures" -- not just specifically the ICAT enclosures mentioned on the Cree, so my gut feeling is they'll be fine.

I've slowly been replacing CFLs and incandescent bulbs, as they burn out, with the Cree bulbs. So far, so good, including the ones in recessed fixtures. But it's only been several months, at most -- ask me again in a few years.

Doh! I never though to check the packaging
For the A19 bulb it is the same -25C and +45C operating range. That doesn't mean they won't work at -40C, just that you are operating outside of the intended range.

...and at current prices, it's not the end of the world if it doesn't work out.

I picked up a pair of these Cree 60W bulbs today -- one "daylight" and one "soft/warm white". Amazing bulbs. Very good light quality from both of them. We'll see how well the "daylight" bulb works in our driveway lamp (very very cold) this winter.

Glad to hear it! Yeah, they're great bulbs.

I've become even more confused by the color labels in the store, though (marketing-wise). Yesterday I walked in and saw the bulbs in one of the end caps (they've really been displaying these things prominently for months now), and they had a few bulbs in lamps. One was the temp I like, the next was the harsh blue light that doesn't appeal to me, and the third was a recessed bulb and again had the softer (yellower) temp I like.

In the rack, they were selling several varieties of this bulb, with various "equivalent wattages" and also various color names. What confused me was that the "60W" bulbs came in two varieties: "soft white" and "warm white." The problem is that these descriptors are not labeled on the bulbs themselves, so if a customer doesn't remember what they called that bulb the last time (like I don't), there's no way whatsoever to know if you're replacing the same color bulb.

The two standard bulbs in the lamps differed in one way: they had their color temperature labeled on the tip of the bulb. But that didn't help, as both their "warm white" and "soft white" were listed as the same color temperature on the back of their packaging.

They need to simplify their message and properly label their products, or consumers are going to get frustrated. This is such an easy thing to get right and that makes it even more annoying.

Historically the Soft incandescent bulbs had a more diffused light, while the not-so-soft bulbs had a more visible filament and harsher light quality with more direct glare from the bulb.

The white coating on the glass that provided the softer look also tended to absorb some of the light so a soft bulb would put out fewer lumens than a non-soft bulb from the same manufacturer of the same wattage.

Perhaps in the LED world this still means a softer overall appearance to the illuminated bulb, not a reference to the color temperature or CRI index.

Outside I still prefer the warm white color over the daylight bulbs. At night I find the daylight color to be quite cold looking and rather blue. The warm white color seems more welcoming at night, without looking too yellow.

These look great, shame I con't find a European supplier yet

Cheers

Cris

Try IC Lighting Limited or Rehmat Lighting Limited, both of them are Cree distributes in the UK. Source: http://www.cree.com/lighting/where-to-buy bottom left corner.
Of course what they have for the international market might be limited: http://www.cree.com/Lighting/Products/International?Input+Voltage=220-240V

Surely someone is making LED bulbs for the European market?

All the European models I have seen so far have had limited light projection angles, unlike the Cree ones being talked about here.

Cheers

Cris

I have a few LED GLS lamps here.

The Megaman 148541 has a very uniform wide bright pleasant light. 1055 Lumens, you're looking at roughly a 75W+ incandescent equivalent, so very useful.

I also have the Aurora AU-GLSB2210 Dimmable lamp. Again, quite a uniform light from the top. Dimming is not smooth, works on a step basis but with the correct dimmer it is still pretty decent. 500 Lumens, its only really about a 40W incandescent equivalent - but still, ideal for table lamps, outdoor lanterns and the like. It is good value for money too, but when you do the USD-GBP conversion it is still twice the price of a $10 CREE USA lamp!

Interesting. This seems to fir the bill for me then…

http://www.ledstop.co.uk/led-light-bulbs...s-lamp-60w.html

Fair price. Output is quoted at 600 lumens, the bulbs they are replacing are only 450, so a little upgrade!

I plan to use them in my outdoor lighting that runs all night around the house. Can't see any temp specs, but I think they should be ok?

Cheers

Cris

We use these indoors, nice lamp, quite warm coloured but we've had a couple fail already (12 months use)

Are you sure they are the same lamp Tahir? The Megaman Economy range was announced in September and available since October. I am interested to know specifically which lamp you have that has failed.

Cris, yes they should be fine for outdoors year-round in the UK. In fact, I have supplied the Aurora lamp to a kebab manufacturing guy who runs them 24/7 inside his massive industrial freezers. His have been working just fine for a long while now and he is pretty happy with them.

OK, maybe not then. We moved into the new house 17/12/12 so the lamps must have been bought in October 2012 I guess. I still have some spares, I'll try and remember to check when I get in.

According to the box it's a Dimmable LED Classic 8W/470 Lumens/2800k ref LG1708dv2

Cree has added a 100W equivalent, that consumes 18W. Not as energy efficient as the 40w or 60w equivalents, and slightly taller so it won't fit in some fixtures.
edit: Home Depot is listing these for $20, no utility discount for them yet.

They've also got more stuff in the pipeline, with 303 Lumens-Per-Watt in development, so we should see even more efficient lighting in the future.

Thanks for the update! I'll be looking out for those 100W equivalent bulbs.

Question: would that mean I could put one of those bulbs in a lamp previously only rated for 60W?

I don't see why not, the heat output and current draw of the LEDs is so much lower than incandescents.

Almost all my LED replacements have been with a higher rated lamp. I replaced all my 35W downlights with 50W equivalent ones for example (they were 6W LEDs).

Funny enough the drivers on my Orluna lamps run hotter than the lamps themselves. A friend of mine brought round his thermal imaging camera, can't remember the temperature but they were quite hot.

I'm of the same mind as Andy. The 60W was referring to the energy consumption and assumed an incandescent bulb and it high (90% to 95%) heat output. A 100W equivalent LED bulb will still put out a lot less heat.
If only bulb makers listed BTUs output

I'm really impressed by the light the 60W equivalents put out, and will probably look to the 100W for our living room where we only have one fixture that isn't putting out enough light with the 75W equivalent CFL that's in there now.

Ooo, this is a good reminder I need to swap out bulbs in my new place. The bathroom has 7 60w bulbs. It's actually more economical and efficient for me to turn on the sun lamp in there instead of the vanity lighting.

Anyone seen issue with LED bulbs and highly humid areas? Debating between LED bulbs I could use elsewhere in future residences, or just CFL for this particular issue.

Apparently the answer is not the obvious one. See this EDN.COM article

Yeah, no problem agreeing with that.

I have replaced some totally-enclosed fixtures with more open ones just so I can use modern bulbs in them. Even the horrid CFLs we have need open enclosures to keep working reliably indoors.

Our experience here with CFLs differs considerably from the "reliable" descriptions of the quoted article. They've simply been terrible, with very short lifespans of only 1-3 years. Cheapies as well as pricies.

Incandescents last 10-20 years for us, and the "wasted heat" from them is not at all wasted in this climate, at least not from the indoor fixtures.

Dunno yet about LED lifespans. Outdoors, in the winter, the LEDs win hands down in the totally enclosed "jam jar" fixtures. But come summer heat, we'll see how they do.

Is airflow the only thing determining the maximum supported wattage of lighting fixtures? I'm curious - I don't know anything about this kind of thing...

The thing determining it is the danger of overheating -- so paper or wood lampshades tend to come with a lower rating than glass or metal ones. An LED bulb will heat its surroundings according to its actual mains power consumption, not its "incandescent equivalent wattage", so an LED with 20W draw and 100W equivalent shouldn't be a fire hazard in a "max 60W" fitment -- but with LEDs there's the extra consideration that the bulb itself has a reduced lifespan if it overheats itself, which basically doesn't happen to incandescents.

Peter

Very well stated!

With regard to LED lifespan, the Cree LR6 downlights I bought 3.5 years ago are still running perfectly. Not a single failure. You can see that they took heat dissipation seriously in their design.


I also have a bunch of Philips 60W A19-style bulbs, and have similarly experienced no failures, no issues. They're all in fixtures with relatively good airflow.

So far as I can tell, LED bulbs are already amazing and with the falling costs and increasing brightness per watt, are ready to completely own the market. What I'm waiting for are for more fixtures to come out with built-in LEDs, intended to last for the life of the fixture. Since any metal light fixture might just as well be engineered to be the heat sink for the LEDs, this isn't all that far fetched. There are a handful of such fixtures on the market, but primary focused on commercial applications, street lights, etc.

Fantastic! Very helpful, Peter. That's exactly what I was looking for.


One day I'm going to have to think about those. We have a TON of recessed lights in our house, so it would be a significant investment to replace all of them, but I'd imagine there would be pretty great cost savings. Although, most of ours are dimmed most of the time they're on, so there's a little savings there. How is the light from the LR6? Like their regular bulbs?


I can see your point, but I think there will always be a place for replaceable bulbs. Some lighting fixtures can get very expensive, and even though the bulbs will last a decade, you might not want to throw the lamp away just because the bulb died. Plus, people might like bulbs with different color temperatures, or they might want to throw their money away on a Philips Hue (Sorry, couldn't resist)

How does a dimmer work? With my minute knowledge of electrical stuff, I imagine (almost certainly incorrectly) that a dimmer is a big resistor that dissipates as heat the energy that would otherwise make the light brighter, so there would be no net savings.

So... how do dimmers really work?

tanstaafl.

Overly simplified, an AC dimmer switch divides the incoming power flow into slices. As you turn the dial 'up' the slices that are allowed to pass through to the lamp become wider. At full brightness the adjacent (in time) power slices are close to 100%

Turning the dimmer dial towards more dim delivers narrower time slices of power flow with proportionally larger time segments of 'no power flow'. The unneeded power is not wasted, it simply does not flow at all.

This is electronically akin to very rapidly (120 times per second in USA and Mexico) flipping a light switch on and off. Adjusting the ratio of on time to off time changes the amount of average power arriving at the lamp.

There is some modest inefficiency in the electronics doing this rapid power switching, which is why a 'dimmer switch' gets mildly warm. Better quality electronics within the dimmer can reduce the amount of waste heat.

Getting more technical, the dimmer cuts slices away from each half cycle of the incoming alternating voltage sine wave. For an inexpensive dimmer the resulting waveform delivered to the lamp is a hacked up voltage, no longer 'clean'. This is why some bulbs will buzz or hum when operated on a dimmer, but will be quiet when operated using a regular on-off switch.

Further complicating matters, bulbs that are not incandescent, such as CFL, low voltage halogen, and now LED bulbs, often are not compatible with a simple Triac dimmer. These non-traditional bulbs may not dim smoothly, may flicker, buzz or even overheat internally if used with an incompatible dimmer.

There are special Electronic Low Voltage, Magnetic Transformer Low Voltage, and other dimmer switch designs which produce more controlled waveforms. These typically cost more, and often enough are not widely stocked on retail shelves.

I do not have actual numbers on hand, but my understanding is that a dimmed incandescent bulb is even more energy inefficient compared to a dimmed LED or even CFL.

Incandescent bulbs have maximum efficiency (such as it is) at full voltage and brightness. As the power is dialed back, brightness and efficiency go down faster. 50% brightness uses much more than 50% energy for an incandescent bulb.

With LED Lamps I would expect the relationship between power consumed and brightness to be more linear as the lamp is dimmed.

This video clip shows a basic Triac dimmer wavefirm as the dimmer is turned from minimum up to full brightness, then back down.

At the 30 second mark, and again at the end, you can see the smooth sine wave voltage shape that is how power arrives at your home, and what goes to the bulb when it is fully turned on (or through a simple on-off switch).

In between you can see the truncated and somewhat tortured waveform as the Triac 'slices' each half wave.

[video:youtube]http://youtu.be/bB8EAIPAMQc[/video]

This article illustrates some of the factors at play when using and retro fitting LED lighting.

Some well presented info from Lutron

Much more technical LED dimming article

An incandescent light uses 80% power at 50% dimmed.

Evaluating LED, CFL, and incandescent lamps for turn-on time, warm-up time, and dimming performance

Yep. I try never to dim incandescents...

They're an older and more expensive design. You can see from the heat sinks, alone, that they mean business. Rated service life is 50,000 hours, versus 15,000 hours for many A19-style LED bulbs. There are several ways you might talk about the light quality.

Color temperature: pretty much spot on at 2700K, versus some halogen reflector bulbs I have nearby. The halogens are a hair more pink-ish and the LED bulbs are a hair more green-ish. (I.e., same color temperature, slightly different hue).

Color quality: these LR6's are rated with an 80 CRI. That's not as good as many of the newer lights, but Cree also offers better CRI on its newer lights. One clever thing about the Cree is that, inside, they've got more than one LED color and apparently there's a feedback circuit to adjust the red-to-blue balance to ensure that the output light quality stays good even if the light is dimmed or as it ages.

Visibility: the Crees have a fancy system of diffusers and such between the LEDs and the front of the fixture. This means you never see sharp points of light from the individual LEDs. The overall feel is very much like what you'd expect from a traditional frosted incandescent bulb.

If I were buying today, I'd shop around at the various alternatives in the same space. I'd also probably get some "100W-equivalent" rather than "60W-equivalent" lights. I have two of the former and most of the latter. There are a couple places in the house where more light would be sometimes useful.

One last bonus of the Cree parts: they're "damp rated". You can stick one right above your shower or outdoors under your entryway.

Thanks for the feedback, Dan.

One more thing: did you find these to be easy to install?

The hard part was removing the old surrounds, cheap spring-loaded crap that the builder installed. Once that was done, installing the lights themselves was very simple, except for a few of the fixtures over bathtubs, where getting the ladder situated properly was more challenging.

Note that some of the newer Cree bulbs come not with a traditional Edison screw but instead with a GU24. They include a GU24 base with bare leads and some wire splices alongside the bulb. You'll want a basic wire cutter and pliers to do the modification.

Last week I stopped by Home Depot and picked up two Cree soft white 100W-equivalents (model A21). I had two specific spots in mind to put them: one in the back porch light, which casts a surprisingly dim light, and the other in the laundry room, where we never seem to have enough light for folding clothes and looking through cleaning products.

After installing the bulbs, they did not disappoint. The bulb in back lights up most of the back yard now, whereas before I couldn't see past about 8-10 feet. The bulb in the laundry room might be TOO bright, but it's good to have there.

I have to admit, as I was standing on the step ladder to reach the laundry room bulb (we have high ceilings), it struck me that I would probably never change that bulb again. That light is on for perhaps 3 hours per week at most, so that bulb is probably going to last longer than the house its self.

I now have my eyes set on replacing the garage bulbs with Cree A21s. The garage ceilings are about 10-11 feet high, so it would be nice to never have to change those bulbs again either. We also need more light in there at night.

I just have two criticisms of these bulbs, one for Home Depot and one for the bulbs themselves:

Home Depot: seriously, I get that these bulbs are great and that you're trying to push them pretty hard, but you need to get these onto your shelves immediately. Stop sticking them in cardboard standups around the store floor. I checked ahead of time to see if my local store had the A21 soft white bulbs in stock (their site said they had 120 of them), but when I got there I simply couldn't find them. The people at the info desk didn't know, and they had to get someone from electrical to point out that there were additional cardboard standups in the electrical wiring aisle, where there are no other light bulbs. I was about to walk off with two A21 bulbs when I realized that they were the daylight models (I hate the color on those), and I had to get them to bring a box of the soft whites down from the high shelves. I'm sure this will all work its self out when these bulbs get more commonplace, but I really wish they'd all be put in the same place.

The complaint I have about the A21 model itself is that they're very heavy. I get that incandescent 100W bulbs are larger than 60-75W bulbs, but these seem a good deal heavier than the Cree A19 bulbs. It made me slightly worried about putting it in the laundry room fixture, which is the kind with a glass bowl you remove and the light is hanging horizontally, held up by nothing more than the socket. I think it'll be fine, but I doubt that socket was designed with that weight in mind...


One last note: I'm thrilled to see that Home Depot and/or Cree seem to be really getting behind the product. My local Home Depot had at least 10 boxes of A19 bulbs, holding around 48 bulbs in each box. They're well stocked!

This may be of interest.

tanstaafl.

Dan, where do you find those Cree downlights? All I see at HD are Ecosmart products, which appear to be rebranded Crees or just some other brand that uses Cree components and slaps their own name on them. Cree should bring those under the same branding as the rest of their bulbs.

BTW, the Cree commercials are great. Broyles ...I mean Lance Reddick is great in it.



To be honest, my response is "meh?" I don't really care if the whites aren't whiter, the light from these bulbs looks good to me. And they'll improve over time. We're always seeing better color accuracy.

When I bought them, I was buying from some semi-skeezy Internet retailers. The Cree LR6 was never really meant for home use. The marketing was pointing at commercial installations that ran 24/7. The Cree CR6, however, was and is widely distributed through Home Depot, rebranded under their in-house "EcoSmart" brand. (I believe.)

The 2nd-gen LR6 is much brighter than the 1st-gen (1000 lumens vs. 650 lumens) and is seemingly priced to match (roughly $0.10/lumen, then as now). I've used shopping.google.com to hunt around. The cheapest supplier is somebody I've never heard of, but well, there you go.

The 2nd-gen CR6 has better price per lumen (800 lumens for ~$60) and you can get it from Amazon (via a third-party seller), among others.

If you poke around Cree's web site, you'll see many, many variations on their products, including replacements for fluorescent tube fixtures, things you can put in 4" ceiling cans, etc. The "architectural" products are the most amazing, putting out thousands of lumens. I assume they're intended for things like atrium lobbies.

Yeah, HD still sells them. I'd like Cree to bring it under their own branding to help reduce confusion. Plus I think HD is putting a little more of a markup on them than Cree might, but I suppose the price makes some amount of sense. What I don't understand is why the 4" models are almost twice as much as the 6" models.

At the moment, I don't see any way I could replace all the downlights in my home with these things. After a rough count off the top of my head, I have 40 recessed lights all over my house. That would mean at least $1K to replace all of them, and I'm sure I have some 4" cans in the mix.


Neat! Thanks for mentioning that. I see that they have some halogen spot light replacements, which we have in a fixture over our kitchen island. I didn't see the ceiling fan replacements, though. The only type of bulb in my house that isn't represented by Cree's lineup is the candle type. I have at least 20 of those in five light fixtures (outside sconce, two chandeliers, a couple ceiling fixtures). I'd imagine that those are probably very tough to make, and the ones I've seen so far from other manufacturers look pretty terrible.

I am not a Cree devotee. Yesterday I picked up another six A19 60W equivalent bulbs and put them in.

The tricky/expensive part of going LED for me is that not all ZWave switches work with them. The cheap switches I put in my house just go nuts when trying to handle LED bulbs, and can't even turn them off.

So, I'll be slowly replacing some of my automation switches with better models (ones with neutral wires) and I'm starting with places where the lights are on the most. We keep some outdoor lights on during the night for safety, so I expect to see energy savings there pretty quickly. At ~10-11 hours per night, we should recoup the cost of the bulbs in well under a year (and the cost of the new switch in about 3 years ).

In other places, I took advantage of the lower heat output we discussed further up. The two fixtures in our garage are rated for 60-75W bulbs, but I've put two Cree 100W eq. in there and now when I go into the garage at night I have a fantastic amount of light. I love it.

The two bulb types which I want and which aren't quite ready for prime time yet: 50W halogen MR-16 floods and 30+W candle bulbs.

There's a huge amount of action in the LED bulb industry on the MR-16 front, but only the very, very expensive ones are truly "equivalent" to a halogen MR-16 at 50W. There's surprisingly little action on the candle-bulb front, which is what you need for most ceiling fans. I bought some Philips LED candle bulbs ("180 lumens") and they're just not bright enough as well as having an odd pink color.

Meanwhile, yes it's pricey to buy something like the CR6 or LR6, but for us, they were the solution to an ugly problem. Our second story ceiling is also the floor of the attic, with a foot of blown fiberglass insulation. The fixtures have auto-shut-off when they get hot. Incandescent bulbs would never stay on for more than a minute. CFL bulbs take too long to warm up. LED bulbs? Perfect.

Very cool! (pun not intended)

Yeah, I'm going to avoid all those candle bulbs until I see a decent model (probably made by Cree). I suppose the shape is the biggest challenge, since it's probably the most visible of the common bulb types. There's nowhere to hide the stuff they need to hide.

Perhaps some day there will be split retrofit kits where the electronics are mostly in a separate module so the bulb part just needs to house the actual LED bits, and the rest of the electronics can be tucked into the base of the fixture.

This is effectively what happens when 12 volt bulbs (halogen or not) are used with 'electronic' mains transformers located in the lamp base or adjacent electrical box.

The compact CFL world eventually had segregated/replaceable bulbs and modular electrics, although I mostly see these in commercial applications.

I'm finishing my basement, doing the electrical myself, and it's come time to get the stuff wired. The big thing I need to figure out currently is the housing for the lights. I want to go with the Cree/EcoSense. I'm not seeing much that I'm loving in a 6" recessed light that isn't the LR6 for $80. I'm doing 18 of these fixtures, and my city will only subsidize $20 on 10 of them. Does this EcoSmart bulb look like the right light to be looking for?

If so then I guess I get housings with standard Edison fixtures. Or is there a different "bulb" I should get, and how does this affect my housing? Looking at the LR6 spec sheet, I could get this and just have to modify it for the LR6's connection type. So if I did get a different bulb I should be good either way with this housing?

What would you guys that are going LED suggest?

I am just starting to look at this stuff for a new build, and visited a house recently that was wired entirely with low-voltage LED pots. 24VDC, using some kind of Phillips bulb/fixtures. They had excellent colour, worked on dimmers, and didn't have the insane clearance requirements of old-style hot pot fixtures.

Michael, could you elaborate on that subsidy deal? Any thoughts on how I would go about checking for similar subsidies in my area? I really want to replace some of my recessed lights, but they're still so expensive...

That EcoSmart bulb (also known as the Cree CR6) is probably the right answer for your needs. Yeah, it costs more than the A19 traditional Edison bulbs, but it mounts flush and looks good. Nice bonus: I believe it's "damp rated", meaning you can use it in bathrooms and such.

Any 6" ceiling can should be just fine for any Cree downlight. For my own house, the 6" cans all had a spring-loaded front cover that I had to remove, and also the Edison socket was mounted (poorly) in a metal plate that clicked into the can. I had to remove the sockets from the plates, so that all was left was an Edison socket dangling from its wires. At that point, you just connect the socket to the bulb, flip out the metal flanges, and shove the bulb into the can.

Note that some Cree bulbs have a GU24 socket rather than an Edison screw socket. At least when I bought them (Cree LR6-DR1000's, several years ago), they came with a GU24 socket in the box, including all the crimps you need to connect them.

If I was truly starting from scratch, I'm not sure how I'd want to do it. The world of 12VDC MR16 LED bulbs is coming along nicely, but they're expensive. There are also a bunch of fixtures these days that have permanently installed LED lights, assumed to last the life of the fixture. I'd be tempted to go with those, if I could find ones that I liked.

Well, I picked up generic 6" housings like you mentioned Dan. I have finished putting them in place and running the wire. It's coming along well. I think that like you said that EcoSmart bulb will work great. I did take advantage of them being damp rated and will have one right above my 6' soaker tub on a dimmer.

Matt, I don't know if these links will help you, but it's through my local power company. So I'd check with yours. The main power company for the state offers it, as well as most of the city run power companies like I have.

http://uamps.com/index.php/smart-energy/home-energy-savings?id=194
https://www.rockymountainpower.net/res/sem.html