Looking for LED lights for kitchen

[Rotech]

Hey guys, I want to replace my kitchen ligths for LED ones, any body know where to buy them in a relative good price?

[Mark S.]

What type of fixture/lamp?

[Rotech]

What type of fixture/lamp?

Hi Mark

I have can fixtures in my kitchen.

[Mark S.]

If you have 6 inch cans, I highly recommend one of the Cree-based retrofits like this one at Home Depot. I've seen them much cheaper in the stores. I think there is also a 4 inch version.

I have several of these. Great 2700K color, brighter than the incandescent equivalent, and dimmable to about 20%.

[Automated]

I agree regarding Cree. I have their 1000 lumen can replacements, and they are great. The only negative is that if you have any circuits with only a single light, then you may have to use an electronic low voltage dimmer, assuming you want to dim it. With two or more, I am able to use cheaper dimmers.

[mfisher]

I recently saw these at a tradeshow and just received one for testing: http://www.SeaGullLighting.com/28171...14600S-15.html

I performed a quick dimming test using a LampLinc and found that the unit will dim down to 5% and extinguish at 4%. It will also come back on at 5%. They have a nice warm color temperature and can be mounted either as a retrofit for a 6in recessed can OR flush mount over a 4in j-box (first one I've seen that doesn't require a can.) While I too would prefer Cree LEDs in my solid state luminaries, the manufacturer said they use many different LED vendors and could not confirm whether Cree was used in these units.

I'm going to test this unit for a few weeks and if there aren't an issues I'll order up a bunch to replace the fluorescent light boxes and incandescent fixtures in the kitchen and bathrooms.

[kaldoon]

HomeDepot - EcoSmart Bulbs have a number of electricians utilizing these with the Vizia RF line

[Automated]

HomeDepot - EcoSmart Bulbs have a number of electricians utilizing these with the Vizia RF line

That's interesting, because more than 1 year ago, I bought several dimmers, and several LEDs, and after a lot of testing came to the same conclusion. EcoSmart has a lot of Cree rebranded bulbs, and of course the ViziaRF+ line of dimmers are Z-wave enabled.

[Rotech]

That's interesting, because more than 1 year ago, I bought several dimmers, and several LEDs, and after a lot of testing came to the same conclusion. EcoSmart has a lot of Cree rebranded bulbs, and of course the ViziaRF+ line of dimmers are Z-wave enabled.

Sorry for my question, but what are "Cree rebrand bulbs"?

[kaldoon]

Bulbs made for Home-Depot made by Cree

[mstrickland]

LED Strips

You can get LED low voltage strip lights at Amazon (and other places). These operate on 9-15 volts and have LED's every inch or so. You can get a 5 meter strip for about $20. They are not for task lighting but glow pretty nice.

This may be an interesting alternative or add on to putting LED's in a can light.

I have used them for another application but plan on putting them in some "mood lighting" for under cabinets and one other spot.

Food for thought.

[Pete]

Relating to "Cree rebrand bulbs" and my experience relating to Cree started a few years back purchasing just the LEDs with their heat sinks. I tested various 1 watt Cree lamps and they were very bright (too bright sometimes) and generated much heat. That said though the newer Cree lamps appear to be as bright and now have evolved to a cooler lamp.

I am seeing now failures of the low cost CCFLs (installed in the entire basement - 12 or so?) for about 2 years longitivity, 120VAC multiple LED Hockey puck under the counter LEDs also after 2 years but doing better than the CCFLs, under the counter strip CCFL 12VDC lighting (still just fine) et al.

So I guess I am a bit biased; but that is me.

[Rick Tinker]

In all of the places in our house where we have lights that are on a considerable amount of time, we replaced the bulbs with LED bulbs last year. Every one of them is dimmable, including the candelabra base ones in the lanterns at the end of the driveway. I was motivated by my involvement with FIRST (http://usFIRST.org) where they are available for robotics teams to sell them to help raise funds for the teams.

There is just NO consideration for CFLs for a number of reasons, not the least of which is mercury, lifespan, time to brightness, power consumption...

Most of the bulbs are made by Lighting Sciences. I will have to look at the CREE bulbs, but for me, the important thing based upon where it was going was either the color temperature or the lumens. In our kitchen, I was willing to go a little higher on the color temp as our previous flood lights made it way too "warm" and yellow-ish. In my office, I was able to use a single 60W equivalent bulb, but because it was very "hot" (color temp 5500 I think) it is able to light up the entire office by itself. The family room got warmer bulbs of course.

In all cases, I have had good luck with dimmers, but the locations where I have Leviton dimmers did not get any LED bulbs so I cannot confirm about them. The Cooper dimmers handle the bulbs fine, BUT they "flash" on full for an instant when you first turn them on, and again just before they turn off, and so for that reason alone I had to replace the dimmer because it was too irritating. It is fine for places such as the front porch lights though. I got the Evolve dimmers, as they are less expensive, but would have gone Leviton if I had extra cash floating around...

Dimming ranges are definitely different though - 25% with an incandescent bulb is very dim, but with an LED dimmable bulb it is almost full brightness it seems. You really have to go low in the dim range. You can make the case that the conversion of 1-99% of a regular bulb translates to 1-33% on a dimmable LED. This is, of course, due to their extremely low power consumption - the bulb manufacturer has to do some funky stuff in electronics to make a 120V bulb dimmed to 100V actually look dimmer since the actual amount needed to run the bulb is probably only 12V.

And OH did I have a lot of fun this summer upon discovering SMD LED strips!! We invested in a new patio and I did some special things with the lighting. The LED strips are inexpensive, but you have to buy the transformers and controllers separately when you are doing multiple strips or depending upon how you are going to control them. I wanted the ones where you can have them be any color you want, knowing that when they are all on they create a pseudo "white" light, and strangely enough, they really do - so I could have my cake and eat it too. Here is a picture of the patio area with the lights set to blue under the sitting wall and in the wood boxes, and the pergola set to red. There is a regular light on the bottom of the ceiling fan in case the "all on" white light of the LED strips was not enough light, but surprisingly it is - having 8 strips certainly helps.

If you have any questions about any of this stuff, I can't promise a fast answer but I will do my best.

[Automated]

What's new with the Cree LR6 LED's:

As stated in some of my earlier posts, we have several rooms using the Cree LR6 DR-1000's, which are DIFFERENT and produce more lumens than the CR6 Cree lights sold at Home Depot or Lowe's. Now I have done another room, and they are using the new second generation of these lights, with model number LR6-10L. They weigh less than the DR-1000 models, having much less heat sink. They also consume around a watt and a half less than the earlier model. While all this sounds nice, I have discovered a con to this cheapening of the construction. The lights have a very obvious "tick" sound when they are first turned on, and again when they are turned off. The believe the "tick" is the aluminum housing quickly heating and cooling. I find it very annoying even though each light only does it once upon power on and again on power off. I may play with my dimming rates to see if turning it on or off slower will help. The improvement with the new line is that they can now dim to 5% instead of only 20%. This is confirmed with my zwave dimmers. The look at 5% dimmed still appears much brighter than a fully dimmed incandescent, but is a bit more visibly dimmed compared to the older model. To be honest, I would have bought up more of the old ones if I could have, as I don't like the noise these new ones make, and I have a feeling that the older model might even age better with the much heavier heat sink.

[Ken LaCapria]

I have migrated most all of my lighting to LED bulbs. The Philips bulbs with 2700K color temp look really nice. They are quite when used with a dimmer. I picked up a few of the Cree bulbs with 2700K color temp. They seem to be just a bit whiter than the Philips. However, the Cree bulbs will dim much lower than the Philips. In one of my ceiling fan light fixtures, I put Philips candelabra base lights with 2700K temp. They will dim just like an incandescent light, but the color temp seems to be more like 2800K.

In the kitchen I installed LED light strips with 2800K color temp from superbrightleds.com. They are installed under the cabinets to illuminate the counter tops. The LED strips are customizable to length and run on 24 volts DC. I took a 24vac transformer and full wave bridge rectifier to power the LED strips. As it turns out, the transformer is happy with the Insteon dimmer switch and I can get the strips to dim to 17%.

The only psychological thing you have to get used to is that when an incandescent lamp dims, the color temp shifts more orange. When an LED bulb dims, the color temp does not change.

Now I have not had the LED bulbs in service long enough to get a feel for the failure rate.

Ken