I’ve been slowing upgrading all of the light bulbs in our home to LED lighting. I’m doing this during light bulb replacements; I’m not running around ripping out perfectly functioning light bulbs just to put an LED in its place. That would be kind of crazy. Kind of.
I try to be mindful of the energy we use around here. Not only does using too much energy impact the household budget in a negative way (and we don’t want that when there’s pretty things to buy), but I think it’s important to balance our use of natural resources, etc. during our time on this planet. It’s not really a balancing act, but using more efficient lighting and heating/cooling methods helps me feel less guilty about driving around in a Jeep Wrangler or flying an airplane.
I tried to embrace the CFI (compact fluorescent) light bulbs a while back but honestly I hated them. They were slow to warm up, they gave off a weird colored light and, I don’t know, they didn’t feel right. Plus, it seemed like they burned out faster than incandescent bulbs. Luckily, the CFIs have been burning out quicker and I’m rapidly getting rid of them.
During this switch to LEDs, I’m also ramping back one notch on the perceived wattage of the bulb. For example, I replace a 75W incandescent bulb with an LED that appears to give off 60W. This helps keep the costs down and even better, makes Earl think he’s getting older because everything is dim. Don’t tell him.
The only LED lights that I don’t really like are LED Christmas Tree lights. The coloring looks funky to me. As technology moves forward perhaps they’ll get the coloring closer to the classic bulbs in a year or two.
