Light bulbs - how much wattage do you use?

[Nomad]

I am tidying up and one is looking at the spare light bulbs we have here and moving to LEDs, a bit more than half are now CFLs. I have been looking at the different wattages.

For a typical room say a bedroom, toilet (no bath), hallways and lounges how much wattage (equiv to the old incandescent system) do you use? We typically use 100W for bedrooms, maybe a 40W for a small toilets etc .. 40W for hallways. Prob 80W for lounges which I have said is a bit dim but they said they don't do much reading in there. Bathrooms and kitchens a brighter 75W.

We also don't have much free standing reading lamps - do you guys use those?


Cheers.

[John H]

I'm not much use on the wattage question - we would have followed your suggestions pretty much pre LED. We have converted the house to all LED since moving in - we got an electrician to change all of the recessed lights in the lounge, hallways, kitchen and porch over to LED in one painful hit to the wallet. However in the process we got rid of the prime source for the loss of warm air in those rooms - up through the old light fittings.

Any other changes to LED for individual lights or free standing lamps I checked the lamp packages to get lamps with wattage that approximated what was already in existing sockets. We also had a local independent lighting retailer (not one of the usual chains) who was good at advising on brands and wattages.

In the house all beds have free standing lamps beside them, and my wife has one behind her Lazyboy because she needs the direct illumination for her handwork and reading. I also like free standing lamps behind me when watching TV rather than ceiling lamps that can be very distracting and visually tiring.

I also changed all of the house lights to LED bulbs in our campervan, so as to achieve power savings and hence battery life between charges when we are camping away from a power site.

[piroska]

There were a few of those old low watt bulbs here when I came but a lot of old school ones, inc a 200w in my brothers room. Which he used as well as 2 lamps.
I changed the lot to LED, everywhere in house.

These mainly:

https://greenled.co.nz/classic-a60-b...-warranty.html

Last well, I also used Bright white in his room, brighter for him than the warm ones....

[John H]

Yes, that bright white versus warm makes a lot of difference depending upon what effect you want to achieve.

[dugimodo]

It was hard to find anything over 10W when I changed over to LED so almost all my bulbs are 8W or 10W LED and I'm happy with the results. The lounge could do with a bit more light but it's ok with 2 x 10W LED bulbs.
I find the equivalencies they put on the box very misleading, All my bulbs were 75W or 100W originally, then swapped to CFL equivalents and it seemed like 8W bulbs wouldn't be bright enough, but they are. At least to me.

As far as the power bill goes though changing from Incandescent to CFL made a small but noticeable improvement but switching from CFL to LED is such a tiny change I didn't notice it at all. I recommend keeping any CFLs you have until they need replacing, it's less wasteful that way as well.

[piroska]

The lounge could do with a bit more light but it's ok with 2 x 10W LED bulbs.
.

You need a new light fitting then, lounge here has 5 bulbs in it. Ranui had 3.

[Jayess64]

Moving to LEDs is a no-brainer. Our living room uses 4x15W wall mounted fittings, passage ways & stairs typically 9W. Also have two 5W free-standing reading lamps.

Reduced power consumption is the obvious benefit, but I now see that spending on replacement bulbs is virtually zero. In the entire time that we have used LED lights (several years now) I have had to replace only two bulbs out of a total complement of 30. With the old incandescent lights just about every trip to the supermarket included a couple of spare bulbs to replace the blown ones.

[dugimodo]

You need a new light fitting then, lounge here has 5 bulbs in it. Ranui had 3.

As a general rule I don't like fancy light fittings. They seem to be designed to rob you of light most of the time, I never liked design that puts form over function. I have 2 single fittings in the lounge with the plain white plastic witches hats and I prefer it that way.
I have a couple of 13W LED bulbs that light the lounge up great but I'm not using them because I have Philips hue smart bulbs that I really like and they don't come in high wattages. I hope they add brighter bulbs in future but these ones are ok as is.

[kenj]

As a general rule I don't like fancy light fittings. They seem to be designed to rob you of light most of the time, I never liked design that puts form over function. I have 2 single fittings in the lounge with the plain white plastic witches hats and I prefer it that way.

Read what you said and told SWMBO who is looking a replacing some of our old light fittings. Thinking of course that she may heed someone else's wisdom as she won't listen to me.

Sorry dugi but she said "he sounds a boring old fart, just like you"

These women!!!!!

Ken

[zqwerty]

I hate brightly lit rooms it feels as if I am in an interrogation chamber, I like to have subdued background lighting with an angle-poise light to highlight anything that I need to look at closely.