Swapping MR16 halogens for greener LEDs

Meet my hallway. This photo shows how we inherited it a year ago, replete with four typical IKEA halogen bulbs, each sucking up 80W every time I came home. While I swapped out the rest of the house's lighting for low energy alternatives, I procrastinated with these ones because they have those pointy MR16 fittings and I couldn't find any compatible mini-sized CFLs (what we all tend to call energy-saving bulbs). I then had a look for the other green alternative: LEDs. After some laborious searching, I ended up ordering some £4.49 ones from the ever-useful energy-saving site, REUK.

 

The result is my hallway now uses 4 watts -- a twentieth of the 80 watts it previously used. There is, however, a downside. The colour temperature of the lights is now more white than yellow. More Lives of Others interogation room than Welcome Home hallway, but I'll live. See the photo on the left. It's also a fraction weaker on the illumination front but, again, I can cope with it for the energy savings.

There are better, more expensive LEDs out there, and the wonderful nature of the technology is that you can get them with any colour temperature. So I should really have simply shopped longer for a warmer and more powerful one. The best one I found on my searches was the warm 5 watt one here (pictured left), but after VAT and postage was added, it cost £30 a pop. As obsessed with carobn-cutting as I am, I'd rather pay £18 for four with a compromise and be done with it! If you find some that are a compromise between the two, let me know.

3 Sept 08 update: I ultimately found the lighting too white, so I've replaced the initial LEDs with three new warmer LEDs from this eBay store. The light is far more yellow in hue and closer to the colour you get with halogens. In fact, my only criticism is they're slightly too yellow (see photo below). They cost £9.12 each.

For the voltage reasons described by REUK, I've had to keep one halogen in the circuit. So I've now got one 20 watt halogen and three 3 watt LEDs, consuming a total of 29 watts. Even with the single halogen, that's much less than the 80 watts from four halogens.

Comments

[Andrew]

If the LED bulbs don't give out too much heat, you could always stick a yellow or orange coloured gel over them to warm up the light a bit.
I tried this with an LED torch I have here using a clear yellow sweet wrapper and it seems to work OK - warming the cold blue light a bit

It may be ineffective in your hallway though.

[Adam Vaughan]

Thanks for that Andrew. I'll try the local electrician's shop at the weekend and let you know if he has any.

[Kate Goldsworthy]

I found some cheaper alternatives here....
http://www.yourwelcome.co.uk/acatalog/LED.html

the 3.6w Multi LED GU10 £9.99 and the 3w Luxeon GU10 LED £14.99 come in warm-white options... still quite expensive but going in the right direction!

[Adrian]

Hey thanks for the great blog, I love this stuff. I don’t usually do much for Earth Day but with everyone going green these days, I thought I’d try to do my part.

I am trying to find easy, simple things I can do to help stop global warming (I don’t plan on buying a hybrid). Has anyone seen that www.EarthLab.com is promoting their Earth Day (month) challenge, with the goal to get 1 million people to take their carbon footprint test in April? I took the test, it was easy and only took me about 2 minutes and I am planning on lowering my score with some of their tips.

I am looking for more easy fun stuff to do. If you know of any other sites worth my time let me know.

[Siobhan]

Hey thanks for this blog! I've been trying to go green and promote easy ways to do so by switching to CFLs and I found out that replacing 10 incandescent bulbs with CFLs can save you $92 per year! Unfortunately I made the mistake of buying the regular kind instead of getting a "warm white" or "daylight" color... the bright bluish light it emits can be annoying in the early hours of the morning! If you plan on buying a more energy efficient lightbulb it's definitely wise to pay attention to the color of the bulb!

[Mark Techopto]

That's a great tip Andrew, I'm definitely going to try it out. I love LED lighting, by the way.

[Mark Redmond]

I see that there a lot of companies selling LED Lighting, such as ours, but when selling ECO Lighting you would like to think that all these supplier and importers would be Carbon Neutral ( as is our company ), but you will find that there are very few.
If your going to sell this type of product you need to show that you ( as a company ) are doing your bit for the planet as well !
www.ledlamps-lighting.com

[Lisa]

The white tint of led lighting is a real drawback for home use.

Hopefully with the development of warmer tints, more people can take advantage of the efficiency they offer.