Tuesday 18 June 2013

LED lights

By Ras's recommendation, I went to IKEA and bought some LED light bulbs.
Let's start with my target: the 90-lumen small bulb that I use in my salt lamps:

As you can see, 90 lumens are quite adequate for this purpose - could be the equivalent of 25W traditional bulbs. BTW I broke off the glass cover and used it like this:
Also bought a couple of 200-lumen bulbs (4W):
To the left is the "untouched" IKEA 200-lumen bulb. In the middle, the same, "naked". To the right, the Philips CFL I was using: 12 watts, approx. 400-500 lumens.
Well, the 200-lumen IKEA is just not adequate for my purposes: it is around 40W traditional equivalent, while the Philips CFL is ~60W, does not provide enough light to replace. It seems that LEDs consume about 50% the power of CFLs, and still pretty expensive: the only real advantage is that LEDs are much more compact in size.
I'll try buying and stripping the 400-lumen IKEA version as well: too bad it only comes with an E24 lamp base, so I can't use it unless I manage the conversion.
I have several converters like this one, from GU10 to E14:
These could work if I strip the E24 socket from the panel. (Question is, is it worth the hassle?)

One more success story, not related to IKEA:
I am using this pair of 5W spots in my bathroom: they give really good illumination, especially for shaving. I had to remove the original sockets, and install GU10 ones, but it was totally worth it.