Fitting New Lighting

wildmandy

I need three new lights - one for kitchen, bedroom and living room. The problem is all the lights I can find are halogen, and with several bulbs (normally three x 50w or more). They look nice but I'm concerned about their power consumption. Does anyone know anything about them, or where best to buy non-halogen lighting?

Mandy

liitleblackcat

I bought some light fittings which had halogen bulbs about 2 years ago when we had our kitchen redone. I didn't like the idea of all that heat going to waste on the ceiling, as we have compact fluorescent bulbs everywhere else in the house, so we bought some CLFs to fit in the halogen bulb slots.

Ours are GU10 fittings (check what yours are) and we got them from here http://www.shopeco.co.uk/gu10-bulbs-112-c.asp
- 10 of them was expensive though. If your fittings aren't GU10, the same site can probably get you something that fits in a CLF.

The only downside is that they take about a minute to get up to full brightness. When they eventually go (one has already) I will replace them with the LED version of the same thing - only 1.5w and really bright.

wildmandy

Wow! That was an informative response!
I've never seen those halogen-type low energy bulbs before.

Can you clarify what CLF's are?

Presumably the LED's at just 1.5W are very low power consuming?

Thanks,
Mandy

liitleblackcat

Oops, I should have said CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp).

1.5 watt is tiny compared with standard bulbs (a 40th of a 60 watt bulb) and a fifth of a 7 watt compact fluorescent. Over a year, assuming they are on for an average 5 hours a day (more in winter, less in summer), they will cost about 20p each in electricity compared with around £8.00 for a standard bulb and £1.00 for a compact fluorescent.

Paparika

Just bought 2 triple spot lights in BnQ's clearance - noticed the LED bulbs there are pretty hefty in price! (about 7 quid a bulb) - but bearing in mind the saving and longevity of LED, you'd cover the costs pretty quickly.

wildmandy

Seems like the LED's are the way to go, or state of the art.
One slight concern, that I read from the website you gave:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "they are not suitable for main room lighting"[/FONT].

Presumably, that is simply because of the amount of light they give out? But if you have three or more of them in one light fitting, this probably doesm't apply?

Mandy

maryjane01

I have just completed a loft conversion with spotlights, and have used CFL and LED bulbs. We got CFLs for most bulbs because of what we had read about the quality of light of LEDs. The CFL bulbs are longer than standard Halogen bulbs and may poke out of some fittings. We bought fire rated fittings that would take CFL bulbs, however we wanted some tiltable (on sloping ceilings and underside of stairs) ones and couldn't find them to fit CFL's so we got LEDs for those.

We are really happy with the LEDs for hallways and study, not super bright, but the right brightness for the job for us (we don't want really bright hallways). The LEDs come on a lot faster than the CFL's and at 1.5wat vs 11 wat they are a lot more energy saving. I may have gone for all LEDs if I had known they were good enough for the job for us. We bought the LEDs from a company in Ireland that somebody else on MSE recommended. You need to get the ones that are '60'. Search forums for GU10 energy saving bulbs. They are expensive bulbs so maybe get 1 or 2 to try to make sure they are suitable for your needs. It was so difficult to find one source that would make things easy to understand with these bulbs. Good luck!

sphrp2

Ethical superstore also stock some of these bulbs, some cheaper than the link above and you can get 10% back from Quidco.:money: